


Eyes Filled With Stars

by Cute Negativity Cloud (Ofelia)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Dieselpunk Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Horror, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Roaring Twenties Aesthetic, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-04-03 15:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13999176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ofelia/pseuds/Cute%20Negativity%20Cloud
Summary: [Did someone order a torture porn fic with a side dish of dieselpunk aesthetic and a sprinkle of Lovecraft lite? No? Well, tough luck.]Andrew Minyard is a bored cadet in an Air Cavalry Academy he doesn't care for. Nathaniel Wesninski is a political hostage with nothing left to lose and a burning desire to join said Academy. No matter the obstacles - whether it's Riko's constant abuse or societal censure against omegas joining the cadets - Nathaniel will join the Foxes. He will. What does it matter if he serves the Empire that conquered his home, the same Empire that threw him into Riko's hands? Nathaniel has a plan, and he will do anything to see it through. What he hadn't factored in was to find people who cared so much, or to make promises he wanted to keep. Nathaniel was only ever good to break them, that he knew. If he was to find family on the way,  well... what's the worst thing that could happen?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed trigger warnings: EXPLICIT RAPE (not in this chapter, although it's a near thing), physical/psychological/emotional abuse, torture, sexual assault, controlling behavior, Riko being a sexist psychotic asshole, every bad trope you can associate to a/b/o dynamics (rape of an incapacitated person, sexism, I'm sure you get the drill. Also: gender socialization heavily influenced by Victorian society). I'm just throwing every fucked-up trope I like into this hot mess.

Kevin was pissed. Mostly anxious to the point of implosion, Andrew knew, but it translated as anger. The guards lining the corridor flinched as he stormed past, Andrew following leisurely.

Kevin’s fingers danced on the hilt of his sword as he spoke. “You’re not to speak to him unless directly addressed, understand? And don’t speak to the Grand Prince, period.”

Andrew ignored him. He idly wondered how long it would take for Kevin to drop the angry act and start begging.

Open-close, open-close, his fingers danced. _Can’t cut down the problem today, huh, Kevin?_

They crossed the last door; one of the guards pulled a rope as they passed. The sound of bells chiming followed them. Andrew looked around, assessing. Compared to the rest of the Palace, the cloister wing was shrouded in an unreal silence. There were no guards in sight, no maids or servants scuttling about. The stained-glass windows were overlaid with elaborate, vine-like iron bars. The gallery opened into a secluded garden. Nympheas bobbed gently on the surface of ponds filled with kois. They were the only spot of creamy white in a sea of red shades: red Japanese maples, red spider lilies, red dogwood shrubs, surrounded by looming trees with dark foliage.

The walls of the garden were so high, the treetops didn’t reach the summit.

Kevin walked briskly towards a large patio overlooking the pond. The royal guards surrounding it didn’t as much as stir. Standing as still as they did, dressed in black uniforms with black epaulettes, black buttons, black Hungarian knots, they might as well have been Raven statues. Somehow Andrew imagined Kevin would not appreciate the insight, had he shared it. Kevin evidently considered them statues as well, because he started to crumble in a way he would have never allowed himself when they were in presence of the common guards.

“You will address him as ‘Your Grace’ or ‘Prince Nathaniel’. He’s an omega of high station, so please, please be a gentlem---”

Kevin stopped and turned to him. Whatever he found in Andrew’s face didn’t help him relax.

“Who am I even kidding,” he added, sighing in frustration. “Be on your best behaviour, or you _and_ Aaron will be kicked out of the Academy, understand?”

Andrew stared at him in silence long enough to make him panic. Then he drawled, “I will try and keep my dirty alpha hands to myself.”

Kevin looked about ready to throttle him. Or down an entire bottle of vodka, that worked too. “ _Andrew…_ ”

Andrew fell silent again. He was staring Kevin down, but not only. He counted the Ravens again. There were two people inside the patio, partly hidden behind the ivy-covered trellis. The trees were thicker, the shadows denser in the north-east corner. Andrew heard the gentle slide of a blade slowly extracted from a sheath.

“What a man of little faith,” Andrew said. “This was your idea, Kevin.”

“It was _not._ It’s _his_ idea, and like all his ideas it’s terrible. I just gave him your name because, frankly, I don’t trust any other alpha not to fuck this up.”

Andrew arched an eyebrow at him.

“Yes, fine, and because we have a deal.”

“Does the deal include him?”

Kevin looked at him like he had just punched him in the stomach. Andrew took in the high walls, the thirteen Royal Guards armed to the teeth, and Kevin - for all that Andrew knew he was a functioning alcoholic and a pathetic, cowardly mess, he was still the best Knight of the Empire, no matter how much Riko tried to convince everyone, even himself, otherwise.

“I just,” Kevin started, and then his eyes darted around. “Just... indulge him, okay?” he said, turning towards the patio again. His long strides were those of a man who saw the gallows and just wanted to get it over with. Andrew ignored his usual dramatic antics and focused on what opened ahead. The only entrance to the patio was a narrow path of stones emerging from the pond.

Once they were inside, Kevin bowed. “Your Royal Highness,” he said, addressing Riko. The Grand Prince was sprawled on a high-backed chair. Andrew dismissed him at once as the spoiled royal brat he was. He focused, instead, on the lithe figure with his back to the room. He was standing in front of a weapon rack, holding a half-sheathed sword, checking its blade. Auburn hair spilled from a low black knot, the waves half-draped over one shoulder.

“No need to be so formal, Kevin,” Riko said. “After all, we’re going to have Minyard’s company for a while, won’t we?”

He shot a sarcastic smirk to the man standing, who didn’t so much as look at him. Riko’s smirk widened. Chin propped on one hand, he dangled a leg over an arm rest. “Unless you defeat him. The humiliation would be too much even for him, don’t you think? Bastard, son of an addict, one of Wymack’s pity cases, _and then_ defeated by an omega?”

Next to Andrew, Kevin stopped breathing. Andrew met Kevin’s eyes, unimpressed. “Man of little faith,” he said flatly.

Riko stomped his foot down. “I’m talking to you, mutt.”

“Funny, I thought you were talking to shorty there,” Andrew said slowly, savoring the horror dawning on Kevin’s face, “not to worthless little me.”

Kevin sputtered something about _Heir to two kingdoms_ and _Can’t talk about him like that_ , but Andrew tuned it out. Icy blue eyes pinned him, narrow in displeasure; a perfectly-shaped upper lip twitched at a corner in annoyance.

“Shorty? You’re one to talk,” Nathaniel said, sheathing the sword he was holding.

“Is that why you selected me? Because I’m the only cadet shorter than you in the entire Academy?”

“I selected you because---”

“Shut up, Nathaniel,” Riko said.

Nathaniel turned back to the weapon rack.

“I see Kevin wasn’t kidding when he said you’re an undisciplined loose cannon,” Riko added, pleased. “Let me make things crystal clear, cadet. I would never want any misunderstanding to impact your future career, after all. Prince Nathaniel desperately wants to join the Air Cavalry Academy. As an omega, the thought of him mingling with so many alphas is simply appalling. We might have allowed it in the past, we might allow it now for criminals and foreigners, but _him_? Just walking into the barracks would tarnish his reputation - let alone train. However, he’s the late Duke’s heir, and I’ve seen for myself his potential. I’m not going to lie to you, his restlessness is grating. His emotions are getting the best of him, and it’s quite hard to remember he’s still just a frail omega when he runs his mouth.”

Nathaniel went still.

“Honestly, it’s understandable. Omegas are supposed to be mated and with a litter at his age, but Nathaniel is eighteen already and he’s still to have his first heat.”

Nathaniel turned sharply to him, his cheeks furiously red. He stayed silent.

“So this is what I’ll concede. You will be a test run. You will spar with Nathaniel, and if he can avoid crumbling before the five minute mark, I may let him join your little squad of rejects, after a suitable number of sessions. You have omegas after all, right? Since he never underwent proper training, you will take care of it, and prepare him for the official Academy entrance exam of next year.”

Nathaniel took two wooden sparring swords from the rack and turned to face Andrew. Riko stood up, and slapped his ass hard enough for everyone to hear. Nathaniel’s grip on the swords turned white.

“I understand you might be tempted to go easy on him, what with his pretty face, but you wouldn’t be doing him any favor. He must face what’s to come. Do have fun. Come on Kevin, let’s spar in the royal wing,” Riko said, walking away.

“Riko, that’s not proper,” Kevin said, his eyes darting from Riko to Andrew.

“Oh please, that’s what Nathaniel wants, right? He better get used to it if he wants to join the Academy,” Riko said. Before leaving with Kevin in tow, he shot a final glance filled with malice at Andrew.

_The thought of him mingling with so many alphas._

_He’s still to have his first heat._

_Do have fun._

Andrew could well imagine a lot of other alphas taking it as an open invitation. _Rape him, he can’t even get pregnant, I’ll just look the other way_ . _Fuck this silly idea out of him. He’s asking for it._

They were left alone. Nathaniel held his gaze, and didn’t look afraid. If anything, he looked murderous. Riko tended to have that effect, Andrew suspected.

“Do you trust Kevin this much?” Andrew asked.

“Not as much as you think. I trust my instincts a lot better. I also trust my ability to kill you if needed.”

 _Interesting_ , Andrew thought.

Nathaniel threw him a wooden sword, which Andrew caught with ease. Andrew watched him take his stance, assessing.

Then he lashed out. Nathaniel deflected, feinted, looking for a gap in Andrew’s defense, not even trying to match him in strength, to parry.

Predictable.

Andrew smashed the wooden sword in Nathaniel’s gut hard enough to crush his lungs into his spine. Nathaniel crumpled to the ground. Andrew noted how he didn’t let go of the sword; he wasn’t completely hopeless, then.

“His Royal Jackassery was right on one thing,” Andrew said as he waited for Nathaniel to get back his breath, “there’s no sense in going easy on you.”

Nathaniel struggled to breathe in, to get back to his feet. When the first sliver of air knifed into his lungs, he promptly wasted it to wheeze out, “Fuck you!”

Andrew took in his disheveled state, the pristine white trousers now stained with dirt from the patio’s sandy floor; but Nathaniel’s attention was all for him. He was glaring at Andrew something fierce. “Nice to see you’re not one of those prissy omegas of the Court, ready to faint if they get a speck of dirt on their clothes. I don’t care that you’re an omega. I don’t care that I’m supposed to treat you like you’re made of glass. I don’t care how much your life sucks, stuck in here with Riko as you are.”

Nathaniel looked at him, the glare somewhat lessened. An understanding passed between them; of something looked for, and now found.

Andrew said, “Now get up.”

Nathaniel threw a fistful of dirt in Andrew’s eyes and lunged. Andrew was quick enough to avoid most of the sand, but took a glancing blow to the shoulder.

Oh, His Grace played dirty. Andrew stomped hard on the little flash of intrigue that fire sparked to life. They exchanged blows for five minutes, ten minutes, thirty, until Andrew stopped counting. There was no reason to. Nathaniel wasn’t giving any ground, was a wickedly fast learner, and his frustration at not being able to land a hit made him focus on the task with a single-mindedness that was nauseating. No wonder Kevin liked him.

Nathaniel learned to never try the same move twice.

Andrew learned not to believe Nathaniel when it seemed a blow had struck too hard.

By the end, Nathaniel was running on fumes, and yet he wasn’t giving up. Andrew understood, then, that he had to either be drastic or wait until Nathaniel fainted of exertion. Andrew struck with a powerful, but predictable blow. Nathaniel had started to use two hands to hold his sword, too tired to use only one arm; he parried, and Andrew shot forward, grabbing both swords with one hand. He swept Nathaniel’s feet from under him and pushed him to the ground. For a moment, Andrew was kneeling above him, and Nathaniel was flat on his back and helpless. Something awful flashed into Nathaniel’s eyes; something terrified, and then dark, resigned.

Andrew darted back like touching Nathaniel scorched him. They stared at each other, breathless and wordless. After a minute, Nathaniel finally relaxed, and sat up. Andrew went to the table next to the empty chair, and picked up a pitcher. He was displeased when he tasted it and noticed it only contained lemonade, but at least it had ice. He brought it to Nathaniel and offered him a glass, which he accepted in silence. Andrew was careful to sit with a good amount of space between them. He forced himself not to look at Nathaniel when he threw back his head and gulped down the drink, and didn’t acknowledge the residual stink of fear hanging over them.  

Instead he said, “You’re not an amateur.”

Nathaniel sighed. “I presented late. Before that, everyone assumed I was going to be an alpha. That’s what’s supposed to happen, right? An alpha mating with an omega will always sire alphas, the alpha genes are always stronger, isn’t that what they say? I was trained to enter the Academy one day… but that stopped two years ago.”

There was no need to elaborate on that, so Andrew let him sit in silence for a while longer. Two years previously, Duke Nathan Wesninski had tried to overthrow his Emperor, Lord Kengo Moriyama. He had succeeded in killing him, but his victory didn’t last long. He had reigned for less than a month before Ichirou Moriyama stormed the city and avenged his father. Andrew wondered if Nathaniel had left the imperial palace even once since that day.

Andrew rolled the useless titles in his mind. Prince Nathaniel Wesninski, son of the most bloodthirsty alpha in recent history, Duke Nathan The Butcher, and dethroned Sacred Queen Mary; and quite unluckily, an extremely rare male omega.

“My father didn’t appreciate the irony of his genes being strong enough to make me look exactly like him, save for one tiny, crucial detail,” Nathaniel added, voice laced with sarcasm. “When I finally presented, he was… furious.”

 _That’s probably what pushed him over the edge in the end_ , Nathaniel thought. He pushed the thought out of his mind, down into the dark well that was brimming with too many monsters to not gnaw at his frail edges every breathing second. “That said, I’m really out of shape. I don’t get to exercise much.”

“You’ll get to exercise a lot more from now on,” Andrew said.

When Nathaniel turned to him and flashed the tiniest of pleased smiles, Andrew thought, _I hate him already_.

“Can’t wait. Maybe next time I’ll manage not to be pummeled to a pulp.”

Andrew stood up. “A reckless idiot like you? I can already tell Abby will love mothering you.”

They walked to the entrance. There were no Ravens in sight; the garden looked deserted and still in the late afternoon light. A lone airlugger crossed the sky, gone in a flash of silvery metal and papery sails. Andrew watched as Nathaniel followed it, eyes filled with longing. Andrew opened a tin case, took out a cigarette and lighted it with a match.

He always got stuck with the junkies.   

“Are you going to be at the ball tomorrow? The Kayleigh Day Regiment is always invited by default, and the Foxes do look like they enjoy a good party,” Nathaniel said.

“Is that how you observed me?” Andrew countered, careful to blow the smoke away from Nathaniel. He didn’t know how Riko would react to smoke on Nathaniel’s clothes; some alphas could get obsessively territorial over any smell other than their own on their prey. No reason to fan the flames at Nathaniel’s expenses.

“Are you going to come if I promise to answer at the ball?” Nathaniel said, amused. His face somewhat fell when Andrew just stared at him, looking apathetic. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. You have no obligation to me.”

“That’s right. I don’t,” Andrew said, and walked away. When he reached the gallery, a guard appeared from a hidden recess in the wall. The guard was shrouded in black from head to toe, only the eyes visible. Andrew was silently escorted out of the cloister wing. He left wondering how many such silent shadows were hidden in the walls.

 

* * *

 

The breakfast table was laden with exquisite china and crystal pitchers; plates and bowls were overflowing with pastries, fruits, sliced meats and stuffed rolls. Like he often did, Riko avoided his brother’s table and opted instead to share the meal with Nathaniel in his quarters. Jean stood at attention at Riko’s side, glaring at Nathaniel. Nathaniel ignored him and kept changing the channels on the radio. The physical activity of the day before had left an ache in his muscles and a quiet sense of achievement in his chest. Riko had been displeased in the outcome of the session, but couldn’t voice it openly. He had sent him to bed without dinner. Now Nathaniel was ravenous. Riko took his time peeling and slicing some fruits in bite-size pieces.

Nathaniel ignored him, too.  

The voice of the familiar speaker sounded through the static. Nathaniel tinkered with the knobs until the sound was clear.

 

 

 

> ... _and she’s expected to be as extravagant and striking as always. The Fallen Baroness didn’t fail to point out the discrepancy between the celebration and the neglect of the Regiment that bears the late Paladin Kayleigh Day’s name. Tonight’s highly anticipated ball has become over the years a mundane occasion, with the attendance of stars and divas; but what remains of the Paladin’s legacy? After the noble sacrifice of her regiment in the war, there was a strong push to create a new regiment open to every designation._

 

Riko scoffed, passing the plate of fruit slices to Nathaniel. “I can’t believe Ichirou lets this garbage air.”

Nathaniel tried to eat slowly, one slice at a time. Riko served himself liberally, and invited Jean to do the same.

 

 

 

> _The ball is supposed to celebrate this decision and remember the Paladin. But how many omegas, like the Paladin herself, are enlisted in the Imperial Army today? The answer is seven, all of them in Colonel Wymack’s regiment. Two of them aren’t even in the army yet; they’re cadets at the Academy, but already enlisted in the Foxes, Colonel Wymack’s informal group of hand-picked next officials. Some wonder if what will be celebrated tonight is actually the twilight of Kayleigh Day’s dream. Gone are the times of the original Fox Regiment, one thousand units strong, more than half of them omegas._

 

“Five hundred omegas in the army, can you imagine that?” Riko sneered.

“Yes, I can,” Nathaniel said. “The only reason why the Imperial Army wasn’t wiped out after the defeat of Nekromanteyon was because Kayleigh Day held the pass, sacrificing her entire regiment and herself.” _If she hadn’t done that, my mother would have wiped you all out_ , was an unnecessary addition he didn’t bother to voice. It still rang as clear as the radio speaker’s voice in the room.

“Is that why you want to enlist? To be heroically slaughtered on a mountain pass? Or to end up defeated and carried off as war prize by the conqueror, like your mother?”

“My mother signed a peace treaty, which was sealed with a marriage,” Nathaniel spit out.

“She ended up in the bed of the alpha who conquered her kingdom all the same,” Riko said, savouring every moment of Nathaniel’s outrage. Nathaniel fought hard for control, relaxing one muscle at a time. He listened to the radio for a few minutes - the speaker was now listing the divas who were going to attend and their numerous lovers, who were expected to throw a scene and at least one or two gloves at one another - and ate in silence. He had to pick his own battles, at least for the day. For once in… probably his entire life, he was looking forward to a ball, and didn’t want to give Riko any reason to lock him in the cloister wing. Not that he needed a better reason than the fact that Nathaniel wanted to attend in the first place.

Riko sighed. “Say you pass that exam, say you join the Foxes. What does one person change?”  

Nathaniel wasn’t fooled by his sudden magnanimous smile. “The Fox Regiment shouldn’t be that small. Kayleigh---”

“Kevin’s mother is dead. All her officers and soldiers are dead. Do you think that sets a good precedent? That it encourages omegas to enlist?” Riko scolded him. “You really want to make a difference?”

 _I want to get out of here_. “Yes.”

“Once you’re my Prince Consort, I’ll give you the Foxes.”

 _Why can’t I have any say in that!_ Nathaniel wanted to scream. He tried desperately to convey the memory of blond hair and hazel eyes, of uncaring and merciless words devoid of any pity. Andrew hadn’t said he was going to attend, but he hadn’t refused, either. And he hadn’t refused to train him, and Nathaniel needed that reminder to keep his mind in one piece until the evening.

“You could parade them around, maybe the sparkling uniforms will convince some omegas to enlist. It would be a nice touch, to have the comfort readily available for the troops. Saves pay from being thrown away in whores.”

Nathaniel locked himself in stony silence, but not even that was enough. The defiance and hatred in his eyes were unmistakable.

Riko took away Nathaniel’s plate, still half-full. “That’s enough. You won’t fit into the clothes  I bought you for tonight at this rate.”

As Riko discussed the drills and appointments of the day with Jean, Nathaniel tinkered with the radio’s knobs. He ignored the delicious smells of the table, loaded with food he wasn’t allowed to eat. He replayed a move he had seen Andrew do in his head, over and over again, itching for the chance to try it.

Riko dismissed Jean, who bowed and left. The door closing behind him was like the clap of thunder. Nathaniel’s fingers froze over the knobs. Riko came to stand in front of him, and grabbed his chin.

“I know how much you like this little game of yours,” he said. “Defying me to work me up.” He forced Nathaniel to stand, and buried his other hand in the soft, auburn curls. He nosed his way up Nathaniel’s neck, breathing in his sweet, intoxicating scent.

Nathaniel wanted to throw up.

Riko pushed him towards the bed on the other side of the room. When he kissed him, Nathaniel tried to push him away; but he was weak, and hungry, and Riko caught his hands with ease.

“Yes, Nathaniel,” he said, his black eyes boring into him. “I like that fire.” Then he twisted Nathaniel’s hair and pulled, hard, making him cry out. “I’m not backhanding you only because I want you to be pretty tonight.”

Riko tore Nathaniel’s shirt open with a snarl.

Nathaniel laughed through gritted teeth. “You’re pathetically stereotypical. Too bad all this posturing can’t help compensate for your deficiencies,” he mocked him. He had understood long ago that being pliant didn’t do any difference. He would get his small, useless, pathetic vindications where he could.

Riko pushed him down on the bed face first.

Nathaniel found his trusted pillow, and bit down.

 

* * *

 

The ballroom was full to bursting. Officers wore their dress uniforms, their medals and swords polished to a gleam. The women were easily distinguished by their dress; aristocrats wore the more traditional long dresses and draped themselves in jewels, whereas the stars were more daring and wore short-hemmed skirts, fringes, furs and an abundance of feathers. There were diplomats and gossip journalists, philanthropists and cabaret stars, tycoons and gentry.

Nathaniel searched the crowd for the Foxes. They always sat in the far corner near the garden exit, but they were often surrounded by a salivating crowd of admirers, harassers, journalists and suitors (these usually for disowned baroness Allison Reynolds. Nathaniel was irrationally jealous; only an alpha could break so many social rules and still be insanely popular. He, on the other hand, would face permanent confinement if he was ever found outside of his rooms without a chaperone). He caught a glimpse of orange near the refreshments. Dan Wilds wore the bright sash of her regiment over her white cadet uniform; she was talking with Kevin, and looked rather displeased. Kevin was the only cadet other than Riko allowed to wear the black and red uniform of the Royal Guard. He was at his second year in the Academy, but his attendance was little more than a formality. He was the second best Knight in the Empire and Riko’s second-in-command; he’d be officially recruited in the Ravens the second he passed his last exam.

Nathaniel slanted a look at Riko, who was glaring at Kevin. Hidden as he was under the shadows and curtains of the upper balcony, Riko didn’t bother to hide his ugly jealousy.

“I will never understand why he insists on mingling with them,” Riko hissed.

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow. “He’s Kayleigh Day’s son. They’re her legacy.”

“A poor, laughable legacy,” Riko spat. Then he smiled. “Or maybe exactly the kind of legacy the omega bitch could aspire to? The only thing remaining is her bastard alpha son, second best Knight of the Empire.”

“I wonder for how long he’ll be considered second best,” Nathaniel said. “What are you going to do if you get deployed away from the capital?”

Riko squeezed his arm harshly. “Why, of course I’ll take you with me.”

Nathaniel didn’t flinch. “I won’t be around forever, remember? I’m joining the Academy.” _If you don’t kill me first. If I don’t kill myself first. If Ichirou doesn’t marry me off, or make me his own concubine, in which case I’ll kill myself first._

“We’ll see about that,” Riko said with a feral smile. Then he linked their arms together, and stepped into the light. The Grand Seneschal bowed deeply. Then he turned to face the stairway and announce them.

“His Royal Highness, Grand Prince Riko Moriyama, first of his name, First Knight of the Raven Empire and first in line for the Sable Crown. His Grace, Prince Nathaniel Abram Wesninski, first of his name, heir to the Dukedom of Czernoskie and to the Star-Crowned See.”  

As Riko looked about with a smug smile, Nathaniel kept his gaze fixed to the back of the room, avoiding everyone’s eyes and appreciative leers and smirks hidden behind gloved hands. He was dressed like an exotic prize to be admired. The robe followed the old empire style, with layers and layers of black silk wrapped so tight he could hardly move, and sleeves so long they reached below the knees. The coat - red, of course - was cut to leave the chest open, in order to display the golden, jewelled necklaces and chains piled on the black silk. The layers and the coat reached the floor, assembled in a way as to fall to his sides, and Nathaniel hated it; it was just too much gauzy fabric, and it tangled with his legs and feet, especially when stepping down the stairs. He was just glad when they finally made it to the ground floor without him tripping.

Riko steered them to the Emperor for the necessary groveling. Ichirou was seated on a couch overseeing the ballroom floor, his wife at his side and the entire Royal Guard watching over. Nathaniel kneeled as expected and tuned out the two brothers’ empty pleasantries. He knew better than anyone all their secret undercurrents of love, jealousy and resentment; he bore the signs carved in his skin.

Ichirou turned his attention to him, his cold smile unfurling slowly. “You look stunning tonight, Nathaniel.”

Nathaniel wondered bitterly what he had done to displease him. They hadn’t seen each other in weeks. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said, keeping his eyes on the floor. He could feel Riko’s eyes burning holes into his back, a sure promise of pain to come before dawn.

“I’ve heard your first training session went well.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I remember how promising you were a few years ago. I look forward to see whether you will be a worthy heir of your ancestors, or not.”

Nathaniel had to raise his eyes to look at him. Ichirou’s barely-there smile was as deadly as always. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Nathaniel said.

Ichirou waved them away with a dismissive gesture. Riko’s smile was frozen in place as he turned towards the dancing floor. He pulled Nathaniel closer and whispered into his ear, “Worthy of your mother for sure. How low have the Siderai fallen, huh, Nathaniel?”

Nathaniel felt his hand spasm, itching to throw a fist, and fought to stay still instead. For a moment, he saw Kevin looking at them; but as soon as Nathaniel met his gaze, Kevin turned and downed a glass full to the brim with white wine, stronger beverages being absent in such refined company. He immediately forced a server to refill it and downed it in a flash.

 _Coward. Coward. Coward_ , chanted Nathaniel’s mind. Riko walked to the center of the dancefloor, and they danced to the music of the orchestra - a waltz. Riko’s free arm wound around Nathaniel’s waist, his hand way too low for comfort, and he was close, too close, crowding him in, his breath humid and heavy on Nathaniel’s neck. It was an indecent display; it wasn’t proper for an alpha to dance like this with an unmated omega. The people around them giggled, blushed, leered. What an interesting, scandalous display. Nathaniel was going to avoid any and all newsreel at the radio for the next few days.

He wished, he wished, he wished… He didn’t dare to wish. If he did, he’d wish for someone to _see_. The beatings, the knives, the assaults, he could endure. Not really, but nearly.

But the press. The gossip columns. The endless pieces on “the red-headed beauty” and “the fiery romance” and “the scandalous behavior unbecoming of an omega of high station (but alphas can’t help themselves)”.

He was trapped and in pain and hanging on just by the tips of his fingers, and if he heard another radio speaker talking about _what a_ _tempting little piece of ass he was, no wonder Prince Riko was always seen pawing at him_ , he was going to lose it.

The waltz ended. As the orchestra picked up again, two white-gloved fingers tapped on Riko’s shoulder.

[Andrew](https://cute-negativity-cloud.tumblr.com/post/172026906682/an-illustration-for-eyes-filled-with-stars-andrew) didn’t look at Riko when he turned. He locked eyes with Nathaniel, looking exactly as bored and unimpressed with the world as he had the day before.

Riko was clearly annoyed, but decided against causing a scene. An alpha asking for a dance in a public occasion was perfectly acceptable. With a last scorching look at Andrew - which, again, he ignored - he left.

Andrew had yet to utter a word when he raised his left palm. Nathaniel slowly placed his own hand on top, their palms barely touching. As they started to follow the [music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPp3Qh-GRqs), Andrew locked his free arm behind his own back, keeping the proper amount of distance between them. Nathaniel in turn only placed the tips of his fingers on Andrew’s upper arm.

“Somehow I’m always surprised when you wear all this white,” Nathaniel said.

“I hate this uniform,” Andrew said without heat. “But the dear captain always manages to volunteer me for all latrine duties when I don’t wear it. Funny how that works.”

Nathaniel grinned, and tried to hide it by looking at their feet. “At least you’re not suffocating.”

The room was crowded and stuffy. Andrew had noted the dusting of red on Nathaniel’s cheeks, and danced quite slowly. He ignored the aggravated looks the other dancers shot them for being in the way.

“What is that even supposed to be? A dress?”

“I’m wearing pants,” Nathaniel pointed out, affronted.

“Which is surprising, seeing this ridiculous ensemble.”

Nathaniel wanted to argue, but really, what was there to say? The clothes were indeed ridiculous, and he hated them. “I don’t know what they’re supposed to be. I’m sure every fashion magazine coming out in the next weeks will tell you in great detail.”

They danced in silence for a while, Andrew slowly moving them towards the back of the room, where it was less crowded.

“The losers can’t wait for you to train with them,” Andrew added quite out of the blue.

“The losers?”

“The Foxes.”

Nathaniel glared at him. “I always wondered if your contempt for them is just posturing. I guess I’ll find out.”

“Contempt implies I despise them. In other words, that I care. You’ll find out soon enough that I care about nothing.”

“Then why accepting Kevin’s offer? What do you get out of this?”

“I don’t get anything out of this. My brother, on the other hand, gets to keep the position he likes so much.”

Nathaniel’s eyebrows shot up. “He blackmailed you?”

“A little blackmail, a little bribery. A guaranteed spot in the engineering corps isn’t so bad, according to Aaron. You look so surprised.”

“I didn’t think Kevin was willing to go to such lengths for me.”

“Don’t,” Andrew admonished, and Nathaniel thought he saw something lurking beneath that flat, emotionless surface; something dark and burning. “He’s a coward through and through. He wouldn’t do this if he had something to lose from it.”

Nathaniel knew that was the truth. Him, Kevin, Jean; they were all Riko’s little playthings. Riko had perfected the ways to keep them apart, consumed by desperation, resentful of every little concession given to the others. Sometimes Nathaniel wanted to kill them; sometimes he burned with shame at how he, too, in turn, used them, dangling them in front of Riko for a moment of respite.

Nathaniel clawed his way out of those thoughts, and changed the topic. “Why do they look forward to train me?”

“You sent every single mothering instinct they have into overdrive, it seems.”

“If they think I need coddling because I’m an omega---”

“Renee is an omega. Nobody coddles her.”

“I still don’t need coddling.”

“I can already see Wymack loving that mulish attitude.”

Nathaniel probably didn’t realize he pouted slightly when annoyed, Andrew thought. He probably didn’t realize he had ‘miserable’ written all over his face ninety-nine percent of the time, which anyone with a working pair of eyes could see, either.

Whether they gave a shit or not was another matter entirely. In Andrew’s personal experience, people chose to ignore inconvenient things.

When they danced closer to the side of the refreshments’ table, Nathaniel was distracted. His eyes darted around, like he expected Riko to appear any moment. Andrew stopped near the table. Nathaniel looked at the finger food displayed like he hadn’t eaten in a week, and yet he didn’t move. Andrew noticed a couple of socialites staring at them, their painted lips hidden behind fans. They were supremely disappointed when Andrew didn’t feed Nathaniel in front of everyone, an event that would call for at the very least a duel. Andrew fixed his empty stare on them until they left in a hurry. In the meantime, Nathaniel had picked up a bun and was nibbling on it.

Andrew grabbed a glass of white wine. “A man can have only so many issues.”

Nathaniel was torn between smiling and yelling at him. Yelling was better than breaking down over a stupid bun. He looked at Andrew, who just returned his gaze. He didn’t order him to eat, he didn’t tell him to get it over with. He didn’t look bothered by Nathaniel’s inability to eat like the perfectly reasonable, normal thing to do it was.

Nathaniel bit down. The soft bread melted in his mouth; the scent of rich meat filling mingled with the slight steam rising from the bite. Before he knew it, it was gone. His hand moved to grab another; this time, he hesitated only for a second before letting it.

“Sorry, it’s probably not interesting to just watch me eat,” Nathaniel said.

Andrew nursed his drink and wished it was something decent, like whisky. He scanned the crowd for any sign of Riko. “It beats watching you barely stand and hear your stomach growling.”

“It didn’t!”

“It did.”  

There it was again, that pout. “Is this part of your revenge? You notice every little embarrassing thing about me in retaliation for me observing you?”

“Not everything I noticed is embarrassing.”

“Oh really. Such as?”

The first thing Andrew had noticed about him had been his auburn hair. Then had come his icy blue eyes; a striking shade that had tormented him. There had been something strange about it, some barely-there shine that he couldn’t figure out.

The first thing Andrew had noticed this night was how Nathaniel’s eyes looked different. The color looked slightly darker, and that indescribable shine was gone.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” Andrew asked.

Nathaniel felt the floor bottom out and swallow him whole. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m fine.”   


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: //doubles down on the rape and slam dunks the horror in
> 
> this is your last warning because Paganini doesn’t repeat: EXPLICIT RAPE AHEAD.

Sitting in a bathtub filled to the brim, Nathaniel breathed in the steam and surveyed his bruises. The newest one was on his left upper arm, courtesy of Kevin. He wasn’t often present at Nathaniel’s training, but when he was, he was brutal. Nathaniel didn’t mind much - he was used to much worse pain, and he liked to see bruises that were the result of hard work and strength gained at the end of the day. He minded the scathing words much more. He knew that when Kevin told him that he was never going to make it into the Academy, that he didn’t work hard enough, that it was all wasted effort, that nothing he did was enough, Kevin was talking about himself at least half of the time. They were the same words Riko used with him.

That knowledge didn’t make them any less blindingly painful.

Nathaniel had lashed out, making the mistake he always did, and Kevin had disarmed him easily. Then he had hit him on the arm, hard.

Nathaniel had been surprised, more than actually hurt. It was such a Riko thing to do. Kevin used to cry when he found Nathaniel crumpled in a bloodied pile after Riko used his knives, or was rougher than normal. Or both.

Andrew had appeared between them in an instant. Grabbing a fistful of Kevin’s shirt, he had pushed him several feet away from Nathaniel, and then pulled him down until Kevin was barely able to keep his equilibrium. The knife pressed to his neck hadn’t helped matters.

“Don’t do that again, Kevin,” Andrew had said.

“For once I agree with the monster. That was fucking shitty,” Dan had chimed in.

Kevin had tried to argue. “He needs to be actual combat ready, you---”

“If that had been a real fight, he would have been dead after you disarmed him, and he knows that. You hit him because you wanted a punching bag. You want to punch someone? Try that on me, man,” Matt had said, glaring.  

Nathaniel had tried to defend him. It wasn’t even such a hard blow, after all. Andrew had stared at him in that unblinking way of his he used anytime Nathaniel said “I’m fine”. Nathaniel had let the Foxes chew Kevin a new one. It was… entertaining, to see Kevin with the Foxes. Everyone else treated him like he was royalty - which he was in all but name, seeing as he had been raised by the Moriyamas. His family had been royalty once, before the Empire was born, and Kayleigh could have been Empress, if she hadn’t been born an omega, on top of being a woman. He should have been sparring and training with the Royal Guard, preparing for his second year exam at the Academy - everyone was supposed to take it as part of a team, and he was already assigned to the people Riko had selected to be the next Ravens. But Nathaniel needed a chaperone, and Kevin took on the role whenever Jean wasn’t available. No one had missed how much Jean seemed unavailable. Nathaniel was growing paranoid; why was Riko allowing this?

Thinking about every time Nathaniel saw Dan not giving Kevin an inch of ground, every time Kevin headbutted with Andrew (and Andrew always won), he found himself smiling.

Then dread turned his blood into ice.

Kevin could not join the Foxes. No matter how right they treated him. No matter how much he might fit. No matter how much Kayleigh would be proud.

He couldn’t.

His place was already decided. He was going to be a Raven, he was going to be Riko’s second-in-command officially, not just informally. Riko had been grooming him ever since they joined the Academy, picking personally the group of cadets Kevin was supposed to train, study, eat, sleep, even breathe with. Riko would never be emperor - not as long as Ichirou lived, and not if his wife gave him children - but in the Academy, he was King. Teachers and officials didn’t dare to go against his wishes. Every cadet wished to be in his inner circle. And every cadet who had the misfortune to spar with him wished they were dead. Riko was relentless, feeded off fear, revelled in maiming - and most of all, he was powerful. He wasn’t simply strong; Nathaniel knew it better than anyone. Riko was much stronger than his size would suggest, inhumanly so, and had the uncanny ability to exude fear. It wasn’t just a metaphor: Nathaniel had seen him making people choke on it, or disable his opponent’s limbs, or straight up freezing them in place. People thought his powers came from his superior ability in using the power of his shardsword.

People were wrong.

Everything the Moriyamas had was stolen, and Riko was no exception.

The strength people fawned over.

The right taken from the rightful heir, and then from her son.

The power Nathaniel’s father had bought with a river of blood.  

Nathaniel turned his palms up. After nearly a month of training, he had calluses again. Not nearly enough, and his skin still reddened and scabbed occasionally, but he was getting there. He hated the idea of looking himself in the mirror and check, but he was fairly sure he had gained weight and muscle mass, too. Riko still denied him food sometimes - because he wanted to jeopardize his training, or because Nathaniel had displeased him in some way, or just because. After the first time Nathaniel had fainted during training, the Foxes had made a point of just hanging out during his private sessions with Andrew and ‘complain’ about how much food they had brought to eat, really it was too much, why didn’t Nathaniel help them out with finishing it?

Jean had seen it.

For some reason, Riko was none the wiser.

Nathaniel hoped against hope that Jean really hadn’t told him, and meanwhile braced for impact. For now he just tried to enjoy how he didn’t feel exhausted all the time anymore. It was like a fog had lifted from his life, and in its place there was soreness and pain in muscles he wasn’t even aware of before. It was amazing. Stepping into the sparring room felt like coming up for air. The Foxes being there sometimes was a little hit and miss - Andrew hadn’t been kidding about the mothering part, and Nathaniel didn’t know what to do with it. It felt… too much. It felt warm, but it was a warmth that left him feeling brittle, like his skin was stretching thinner and thinner, and what he had inside was coming too close to the surface. Sparring until he could only feel the ache in his muscles felt much better. Sparring with Andrew felt better. He had promised to train Nathaniel until he was ready for the Academy entrance exam, and he was keeping his promise. And true to his word, Andrew didn’t care. He didn’t care that Nathaniel was supposed to be weak and frail. He didn’t ask about his condition or his feelings. In facts, some days he didn’t speak at all. Nathaniel welcomed that, too. Some days he didn’t want to talk, either. Some days, the Foxes’ concern made him want to scream at them. He knew it was hypocritical; they gave him what he wanted - for someone to _see_ \- but he was chafing under it, and he didn’t deserve it anyway. The guilt already burned him from the inside out, and he had interacted with them for barely a month. At this pace he wasn’t going to survive it.

He stood up abruptly, rivulets of water cascading down into the bathtub. The water sloshed over the brim and splashed on the tiles. He couldn’t let himself think about it, he couldn’t afford to doubt. He had to focus on the only thing that mattered - getting out of there.  

“So that’s where you are.”

Nathaniel started at the sound of Riko’s voice, and tried to cover himself. It didn’t matter how foolish it was, how useless - Riko had violated his body too many times for it to matter - his hands still moved on instinct, fuelled by shame and revulsion.

A delegation from the Free City-States was visiting, and that had been keeping Riko busy in the last few weeks. Nathaniel had been telling himself not to get used to it, not to let himself breathe too deep, but it was impossible. Seeing him there again after a week of respite was almost too much; Nathaniel summoned every shred of self-control he had not to do something supremely stupid, like trying to kill him.

The time Riko was forced to pass away allowed him to see the changes in Nathaniel’s body. He walked to him, and slowly ran his hand on Nathaniel’s bicep, the skin still wet from his bath. Nathaniel had never been soft and slightly plump like other omegas - he had been trained to be a Knight, and it showed even after two years of seclusion. Now that he was training again, his muscles were toning very quickly. Riko took it all in - the newly defined lines of his body, the bruises painted in the colors of blueberries and raspberries, and the scars decorating his skin.

Such a pretty picture.

He let his hands roam on Nathaniel’s newly toned body, breathing in his intoxicating scent - made even more alluring by the tiniest hint of fear mixed in, which Nathaniel did his best to hide, but couldn’t, not completely.

Riko bit the bruise on Nathaniel’s upper arm, relishing in the gasp that earned him. “Who gave you this?”

“Kevin,” Nathaniel answered through gritted teeth, as Riko bit and sucked harshly on the spot. There was a scar underneath, jagged and twisted, the faint trace of stitches left on either side. Riko remembered it; it was one of the first he had given him. Instead of staying put, Nathaniel had kept challenging him, until Riko had twisted Nathaniel’s arm behind his back and forced him to the ground. The stitches had torn, and the wound had required new ones.

Riko had quickly learnt that slaps - the customary way to deal with unruly omegas - simply weren’t enough for Nathaniel. He had also learnt he greatly enjoyed that.

Nathaniel’s body had become his canvas, every scar singing a secret song only Riko could hear. _Mine, mine, mine_ , they sang, burying the old scars left by Nathaniel’s father, burying who Nathaniel had been before. What was left was carved and modelled by Riko, and Riko alone.

A bruise would fade.

It wouldn’t matter in the end, anyway. Nathaniel wasn’t going to Academy, and that was it.

“You smell so good I could eat you whole,” Riko said, his lips pressed to the juncture between Nathaniel’s neck and shoulder, where the bite would take; there, the scent was the strongest, so delicious Riko could hardly imagine it being better - yet it could.

When he felt the press of teeth, Nathaniel pushed Riko’s face away.

“No,” he hissed, arm locked in place and terror tumbling into his belly. His entire hand was splayed on Riko’s face. Riko peered at him through his fingers, a predator frozen in the moment before the bounce.

“What are you afraid of, Nathaniel?” he asked. His hand slowly traced Nathaniel’s palm, the thin bones in his wrist, snaked up the inner part of his arm, where the skin was most tender. Then he gripped his upper arm, wanting to bruise, and Nathaniel let go of his face immediately. “It’s not like I can give you the bite, can I? I’m the Grand Prince; I can’t mate with a barren omega who can’t even have one heat in his useless life.”

Every morning, Nathaniel’s mind snapped awake with a spike of painful fear. Every morning, he breathed through the panic, and assessed the state of his own body as a mental distraction.

_Don’t think about it._

_Still no heat._

_Still in here_.

_Don’t think about it._

He thanked the heavens every morning for not being in heat. He didn’t even know why it was taking so long; neither did the queue of doctors the Emperor himself had called to examine him over the years. It was one little stroke of luck, the only one he had.

Nathaniel didn’t believe in luck, least of all for himself, and knew it wouldn’t hold.

“If only you had your heat, I could fix this. You’d be my mate, you wouldn’t have to hide in here. You know I’d give you Czernoskie to tend to. I could even give you your mother’s seat back. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“I can’t have that as long as she lives.”

“Well then, I only have to kill her, don’t I?”

A blade of ice stabbed Nathaniel, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.

“Really, Nathaniel? She left you.”

 _We were escaping_ , Nathaniel thought. _I was too slow_.

Every single day, it would resurface. A sliver of that day, evanescent and floating and almost shapeless, the tentacle of a medusa bobbing in the dark sea. Every day, he’d push it down as fast and as deep as he could. He couldn’t let himself think about it. He would go mad if he did, remembering how close he had been to be free, away, with her.

How she was free, away, without him.

How he had made a promise, and had broken it, and kept breaking it day in and day out by waking up every morning.

 

_Promise me, Abram. They won’t have us alive. I will kill myself first; and I will kill myself if they catch me. You will do the same._

_Promise me_.

 

He had screamed for her when they had caught him. He had been careless, let one of them wound him, and so he had been too slow. She had jumped over the roof, onto the airlugger waiting. When she had turned, her hair whipped in the wind and almost completely hid her face. He had seen her eyes - dull, so dull - flash with too many emotions for him to really understand. He liked to think that at least one had been love.

 _Remember your promise_ , she had screamed.

She knew he had failed her, wherever she was. She knew.

Abram was drowning. Nathaniel struggled to break the surface of the viscous memories. He came to and found himself pressed against the bathroom’s vanity, Riko’s lips sucking hard on a nipple, fingers twisting the other. Riko was rummaging in an open drawer with his free hand. When he found what he was looking for, he straightened, and showed Nathaniel what he was holding.

“If you behave, I’ll even use this,” Riko said, holding up a jar of lube. “Now be a good boy. Turn around.”

Nathaniel thought, distantly, that in a few hours he had training, and he didn’t want any bruise or cut more than necessary. He turned, and laid on the vanity’s table. He gripped the outer edges of the vanity as hard as he could.

Riko plunged two fingers in without even opening the jar. Nathaniel bit his lower lip until he was sure it was bleeding, and managed to only grunt.

“You’re so dry,” Riko said, watching his own fingers pushing in and out. “Not a slut like all other omegas. It doesn’t matter how much they might scream they don’t want it, they all get wet so fast. I can’t wait for you to be in heat. I want to see what you look like, drenched and needing to be fucked. Will you beg, then? Will you beg to be filled and knotted like they all do?”

Nathaniel’s entire being convulsed in revulsion at the thought. He didn’t have any gods to pray to, yet every time he slipped and thought about it, every time Riko mentioned it, every time he heard the same trite clichés being repeated over and over again - _omegas in heat are mindless animals, they spread their legs for the first alpha cock available, you can’t rape an omega in heat, actually can you rape an omega at all? It’s their own biology that demands it, they all want it in the end, why would they walk around smelling like that otherwise? They’re asking for it, they love it, they crave it_ \---

He begged. He begged and prayed of never, ever getting his heat.

But the only gods he knew were unbound in their cruelty and merciless in their bloodthirst.

He was careful to not sigh in relief when he heard the jar popped open, the faint sound of Riko slicking himself up. It had been seven days since last time; enough for the effect to start wearing off. Riko was only there for a quick fuck, but Nathaniel knew well how little it took for his sadistic side to take over.    

Riko shoved his cock in with a long, satisfied groan. Nathaniel hissed almost too softly to be heard. Riko, smirking, slapped his own hands hard on Nathaniel’s hips and gripped them, relishing in the pained grunt that earned him. Then he fucked him in earnest, using the grip to shove Nathaniel’s hips back with every savage push. The assorted bottles and jars on the vanity clinked and jingled, a delicate refrain to the loud sound of skin slapping against skin. Riko looked down at Nathaniel and went, if possible, even harder. Nathaniel’s arms were splayed wide, showing the sculpted expanse of his back. His auburn curls pooled on the vanity’s table, his pale neck on display and so inviting, Riko’s mouth was watering. His ass was reddening more and more with each violent push, his hole sucking Riko’s cock greedily in. His skin was covered in the scars Riko had given him, scattered among droplets of water.

Nathaniel stayed stubbornly silent, the reflection of his face in the vanity’s mirror hidden by his hair.

Riko would’ve been annoyed, would’ve yanked his hair back and drank in his yelp of pain, but he _felt it_. As his own orgasm built and built, he felt the surge with each growing wave of pleasure, until it was all he could feel.

He exploded inside Nathaniel’s body, and the power filled him, obliterating his senses. He chased the sensation inside Nathaniel’s heated flesh, fucking into him, his savage thrusts more animal-like than human.

It was always a disappointment when the sensation ebbed, receding like the elusive tide. He slowed down, then stopped, his still-hard cock shoved all the way up Nathaniel’s ass.

Nathaniel’s arms were burning, and he folded them underneath his chest. He rested his forehead on his arms and breathed deeply. Shivers ran through his body as the familiar coldness washed through him, leaving him exhausted.

Riko’s hands moved from Nathaniel’s hips to his asscheeks, spreading him open. Riko half pulled out, and watched his own cock sliding out, wet with lube, come oozing at the sides. He licked his lips at the delicious sight.

He knew the shivers weren’t from an orgasm; they were the sign of Nathaniel’s power being leeched out, passed on to the one who had conquered his body, who had laid claim to it and forced it into submission.

Such was the power of the Siderai of Neo Eudaimonia, the omegas touched by the Noctiluca, the Moon Demon.

Riko was careful never to let too many days pass between one fuck and the next, lest Nathaniel got back his powers. In a flash of hot anger, Riko remembered how his brother had graciously allowed him one hour to replenish his strength.

“Go fuck your Siderai whore,” Ichirou had said, “you’re to give a demonstration of your powers to the ambassadors tonight, and you must be at peak form. Do remember, however, that I sanctioned his training for the Academy, and I expect him to be able to train effectively.”

Riko sneaked a hand between Nathaniel’s legs and grabbed his cock, finding him flaccid. “Was your mother also this frigid? Maybe it’s genetic,” Riko asked, his mockery sharp with a hint of dangerous annoyance.

Nathaniel waited for the punishment, but Riko just pulled out. Nathaniel felt the fluids run down the inside of his thighs, heard the rustle of Riko’s clothes as he rearranged them. Riko left without another word.

Small mercies.

Nathaniel slid to the ground.

It felt like a white-hot poker had been shoved inside him and rummaged around. The skin on his ass was inflamed and sensitive to the minimum touch. Riko’s fingers had left red imprints on his hips that were going to bruise.

But the worst thing was always the coldness. He couldn’t even remember anymore how it felt, to just be _whole_. To feel the light of the Noctiluca dancing just underneath his skin, to see it dancing in his eyes.

Was this what his mother’s life had been like? Raped and stripped of her powers by the man she hated?

He honestly wasn’t sure. He had vague recollections of happier times, at least for her. His father had always been violent towards him, but maybe his parents had been in harmony, for a while. He still remembered his mother’s eyes when she was at peak power, shining with the light of the stars, and he remembered his father standing next to her. He also remembered furious fights that ended with knives drawn and blades of light being thrown. He remembered his mother whispering the secrets of the Sideracoronata, how his sons and daughters might one day inherit the power, how they could gift anyone with the strength of a hundred men, the danger they might face because of the greed of humans, how he’d have to protect them. At the time, they all lived in the illusion that he had simply inherited the Moon Demon’s blessing, like other alphas on his mother’s side. It was the only thing his father approved of his existence.

Then Nathaniel had presented, and everything had shattered.

He just wanted to stay on the cold tiles for a little while longer. Possibly forever.

He forced himself up, and limped slowly to the bathtub. He went through the motions. Drain the tub. Stand in it. Don’t think about it. Wash himself. Don’t think about it. Fill the tub again. Soak. Drain the tub. Dry himself. Get dressed. Stretch. Too painful. Don’t think about it. Walk around, then. Not getting better. Hopefully he could hide the limp.

Nathaniel grew more and more furious at himself. He had trained in far worse conditions when he was barely older than a child - had two years really made him that weak? He had fought and sparred through bruises, cuts deep enough to reopen and bleed on his training clothes, he had even survived sparring with his father himself - if not unscarred.

He needed to get stronger.

He needed to gain the Foxes’ trust.

He needed to take them to the Chthonios.

The Chthonios, the deep dark well that had swallowed his father and his men and spit only him out, his hands dripping with blood, and holding an object that would change the course of history. It had been only the first of many, many other blood sacrifices. The stench of it clogged Nathaniel’s nose, so powerful he felt like throwing up.

The Old One’s corpse laid at the bottom of the ruins; the remains of Night-Raging Zagreus would never decay. But even though its mind was long gone, it still dreamed, it still whispered madness to---

Nathaniel’s hands were covered in blood. The breath was punched out of him.

 _This can’t be real_ , he thought, a terrified gasp escaping his lips. _Not yet, not yet, not yet...!_

He heard a distant sound, a rumble of far-away thunder and longhorns, and a whisper, a whisper crawling, sneaking into his mind, closer, louder, _louder_ \---

Nathaniel threw himself against the windows and flung the curtains open. Sunlight bathed the room. He pressed one side of his face and both hands against the glass, gasping.

His hands were clean. The room was silent.

Nathaniel drank the silence in, waiting for his hammering heart to slow down. When Kevin arrived to fetch him, he couldn’t bolt out of the door fast enough.

 

This time, they actually trained outside the Royal Palace. If he hadn’t been still rattled to the bones with what had happened in his room, Nathaniel would have been ecstatic. He was seldom allowed out, and usually it was for parades or official events of such sorts, with a wall of bodyguards, and Riko’s presence, suffocating him. The Academy wasn’t far by any means - they _walked_ to it, through the Royal access, lined with guards - but the sense of freedom it gave him was enough to make him lightheaded even through the lingering terror.

He was wearing practical, comfortable clothes.

Riko wasn’t around.

He was walking, basically unattended to, to a place he was eager to see.

Sure, he was walking next to Kevin, but even he wasn’t so bad. He was a good distraction from the soreness, at least.

The Foxes were waiting for them at the end of corridor, ready to escort him to the flying practice grounds. Wymack was at the front, arms folded and a stormy expression in place. Nathaniel’s blood turned to ice, but he didn’t slow down - he knew better - and fixed his eyes on the colonel’s chest. High enough to avoid looking at the ground like a coward, but not enough to feel like he was challenging him. He stopped at just the right distance to be able to step away from him, if quick enough.

When he heard Andrew’s voice, he almost turned.

“Wymack, you’re scaring the little thing. You’ll make Dan cry,” he said, his tone as flat as always.

Dan sent him a dirty look. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“He’s a scared rabbit, and you just want to protect him. You, and Matt, and Renee, and even Allison.”

Ignoring Dan’s and Allison’s outraged cries, Nathaniel sent him a dirty look, and straightened. Wymack’s stern look softened a fraction. He unfolded his arms and took a small step back.

“See? All better now. Let’s go,” Andrew said. He briskly turned and walked to the practice grounds, not sparing another glance for anyone.

“Last time I checked, I’m the one who gives orders here,” Wymack said, but it was just a token effort. He had the tone of a man who knows better what to expect from the unmovable force Andrew was; Nathaniel could sympathize. Getting anything out of Andrew took a monumental effort - which was the reason why Nathaniel was looking forward to meeting his twin. He wanted to know why Kevin had been able to blackmail Andrew into compliance. And then there was a simple fact - Andrew was just too invested in repeating how much he didn’t care about the Academy, the training, the flying. It looked true most of the time. Nathaniel couldn’t accept it. To see someone who had _everything_ \- the talent, the Academy, the freedom - and acted like he could and would throw it all away just to prove how much he didn’t care about any of it… Nathaniel had thought he knew what burning, desperate jealousy felt like. Now he knew better. Kevin might have been slightly better off than Nathaniel, but he was anything but free.

Andrew was.

Yet he was lying about not caring, Nathaniel was sure of it. He was sure of it, and he would prove it.

Their training grounds were quite far out, almost on the outskirts of the Academy. At least three alphas openly stared at Renee - she kept wearing her serene demeanor like an armor and didn’t spare a glance to them - but most either had the decency to be more discreet or simply ignored her. When they noticed Nathaniel, however, they all stared, alphas and betas - anyone who recognized him, and whoever didn’t was quickly updated by the closest knowledgeable person. It only took reading the royal gossip columns and knowing their black and white pictures, or having been invited to the right party at the Palace. Nathaniel’s sight was the match, and the news spread like wildfire.

Nathaniel knew it was going to happen, sooner or later, but he hated it nonetheless. He could take the jeers, those weren’t a problem. He hated himself for it, but he hoped being considered Riko’s property had at least one upside. Judging from the barely-concealed vulgar looks sent his way, he was a fool.

“Fucking animals,” Dan sneered, walking closer to Nathaniel. He tried to discreetly put some distance between them anyway.

“Ignore them,” Kevin instructed, looking straight ahead.

“Did you know that more than half of the fourth year volunteered for playing enemy at the next entrance exam?” Allison asked. “Usually they avoid it to bitch about their own final exam, but I guess the prospect of one single omega participating this year was just too alluring to resist.”

Nathaniel felt a wave of nausea threaten to overcome him, and clamped down on it with the practiced ease of someone who relies on lying like birds rely on their wings to fly. He met Allison searching gaze with an impassive one of his own. She scoffed at him. “Great, that’s exactly what we need, another emotionless monster,” she said under her breath, and turned.

She was definitely the brashest baroness he had ever met. No wonder she had been disowned.

“Now, Allison,” Renee said, “at least we should try to be kind to Nathaniel. We’re going to be his team during the entrance exam.”

“Renee is right,” Wymack interjected. “Today we start building your teamwork, so don’t even start that. The less energy you waste trash-talking, the more energy you’ll have to not look like jackasses out there.”

It was a funny feeling, being shot through by a sudden sense of dread that was also, Nathaniel knew, so utterly predictable. “‘Look’?”

“Yes. I was informed the Grand Prince will grace us with his presence later.”

This time, Nathaniel’s steps faltered. Fear clawed up his throat with dark talons until he was choking. _Of course Riko would_. Hearing Kevin’s sharp intake of breath didn’t help.

Andrew barely turned to him when he said, “If you’re done panicking, we’ve training to do.”

He spoke like Nathaniel’s impending panic attack, the Grand Prince coming to watch them, and the fact that the cause of it all was Nathaniel’s selfish desires were all the same to him - utterly uninteresting.

“Aren’t you afraid of what might happen?” Nathaniel asked. So many things that could go wrong. One might be simply breathing and it could be okay one minute and then the next Riko might just find it distasteful for no reason at all, or because he just wanted to find a reason, and then.

So many things that could go right, and then what would Nathaniel be?

If he let himself think about it, he knew the answer.

 _Just like his father_.

When Andrew turned to look at him, pinning him down with hazel eyes that shone almost golden in the sunlight, Nathaniel was sure he knew; that, impossibly, he had somehow sifted through the black swirling mass of Nathaniel’s mind and found the truth. Nathaniel knew, logically, that it wasn’t possible. But Andrew looked at him in a way that made him feel truly seen, and exposed, and what was there to be seen wasn’t pleasant.

At length, Andrew answered, words slithering out with careful precision. “Fear is for those who still foolishly hope.”

“Wow, that’s uplifting,” Matt said, with a long-suffering sigh. “Don’t listen to him. The Grand Prince will just watch. Unpleasant, but we’ll make it,” he concluded, smiling brightly to Nathaniel.

“Don’t be naive, Boyd,” Kevin scolded harshly, but the undercurrent on panic was plain for everyone to hear. “It’s not a matter of ‘making it’ with the Grand Prince. We must---”

“There is no ‘we must’, Kevin,” Andrew cut him off, perfectly calm. “That’s what he wants.”

“Riko wants us to feel unsure, to question our every move and feel under scrutiny,” Renee elaborated. “But that’s just another day of being a Fox, isn’t it?”

Nathaniel still felt sick, but what could he do? Go back running to his prison? He looked at Kevin, at how easily and quickly his haughty façade crumbled if it was just as much as mentioned that Riko would be watching. A fierce scowl darkened his face. Training was Nathaniel’s safe haven, so of course Riko would want to desecrate it. That was all he was good for.

Dan met his eyes, and her smirk was satisfied, almost proud.

Nathaniel ignored the little twist in his chest - a blade with delight on one edge and anguish on the other - and focused instead on the airluggers lined on the turf, their masts and hulls glinting in the sun. A medium-sized airship was behind them, the Kayleigh Day insignia painted on the side. They looked glorious. The sight was a bubble expanding into Nathaniel’s chest, opening his ribs into the light.

Andrew was looking at him. When their eyes met, Nathaniel expected mockery - half of the time, Andrew was making fun of his spasmodic desire to fly again, the other half being spent in stone-dead apathy - but the only thing he was greeted with was a sort of calm assessment. A fraction of the frantic clamor in Nathaniel’s mind quieted down. He was going to face Riko eventually; the sooner Riko tried something, the sooner Nathaniel could learn how to deal with it on the battlefield. He was sure the Foxes were well aware of what being his assigned team during the entrance exam would mean - but he still needed to hear it from them, needed the reassurance that they believed he - they - had a chance.

“Riko is guaranteed to volunteer his entire team for the exam,” he mused out loud, his eyes fixed on the glinting airluggers again. “He’ll do anything to prevent me from passing. You’ll be a target because of me. Are you really okay with that?”

Wymack looked at him like he was supremely stupid. “Not to burst your bubble, kid, but it’s always like this when an omega enlists. They always try to make it as hard as possible for them to pass.”

“And we always try our best to help them pass,” Dan added. “I don’t care if R---”

“‘Try’ being the keyword here,” Andrew interjected.

“Now, that’s unkind,” Renee said with a knowing smile. “They got me in, after all. And Aaron, too.”

“Aaron just had to prove he’s a nerd to get into the engineering corps,” Allison said.

“And that’s quite impressive. Have you seen those tests? They’re insane,” Matt countered.

A figure peeked up from the airship’s open front hatch. “Why are you talking about me? You know what, I don’t want to know. Just don’t.”

Nathaniel had never seen Andrew’s twin before, but the effect was striking. Aaron looked like Andrew down to the haircut, but his attitude was so different as to be obvious in just a few seconds. Also, he was an omega. It was jarring.

“Gods, Aaron, is that the first impression you want to give? What are you, nearing your heat?” said a voice from inside the ship.

“Fuck off, Nicky!”

“What have we told you about designationist jokes, Nicky?” Allison said, annoyed.

Nicky emerged next to Aaron, waving at them. “Sorry, Renee and Nathaniel!”

“What, I don’t get an apology?” Aaron asked.

“I guess. You’re always like this, it can’t be your heat.”

“If you chattering geese are done,” Wymack said, with that long-suffering tone and arms-crossed posture Nathaniel was starting to recognize. “Nathaniel.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You’ve flown one of these before.”

It wasn’t a question. Nathaniel felt such elation he almost, almost rose his eyes from the ground. “Yes, sir.”

“Think you can still do it?”

Nathaniel couldn’t hide his smile when he answered, “Yes, sir.”

“Then today we’ll see what you can do with a real sword and a real mount. Nicky, fetch the swords. Aaron, get down here and get his airlugger tuned. Everyone else, make yourselves useful.”

The Foxes moved in a sudden flurry of activity. Before Nathaniel could join them - and he was already dying to - Wymack stopped him by raising a hand.

“Before you get any ideas, Aaron will also tune your airlugger to half capacity, just in case you don’t remember how to fly properly and safely.”

“I know how to fly!” Nathaniel said, affronted.

Wymack raised an eyebrow. “Huh. So you know where my eyes are. Nice to know.”

A part of Nathaniel was still aware of a simple fact - Wymack was an alpha male in a position of authority, close in age to Nathaniel’s father, and that small, constantly terrified part was petrified because _no, no, no, stay away, run, hide_ . Another part was just pissed off, because _fuck you, I’m this close, it’s right there and I’ll fly the damn thing if it kills me._ “Does Andrew get lessons in prodding from you?”

What he actually meant was _Does he take lessons in being such an asshole with way too much observational skills from you_ , but seeing as this was his first day training with Wymack present, he thought behaving was the best course of action.

“Hah! I only wish Andrew would follow my lead in anything at all.”

“If you think I can’t do this---”

“I’m on your side, kid.”

Nathaniel fell silent. For a moment longer, he was able to hold Wymack’s gaze; to challenge, to be stubborn, to hope. Then he let his eyes fall to the ground again.

“You’re perfectly reasonable in not believing me, but it’s true. Hopefully, you’ll see.”

“Yes, sir,” Nathaniel said.

“I can already tell I love that tone. You have your orders, recruit.”

Nathaniel saluted, and went to Aaron.

He regretted it after less than five minutes.

“Stop doing that! What’s the point of me tuning this thing if you just go and make it explode?” Aaron yelled. All the Foxes around them snickered - save for Andrew, of course.

“It will not explode, it will just go faster - isn’t it your job to know that?” Nathaniel asked, fighting the urge to yell back. It was almost impossible to believe that such a confrontational, whiny and downright aggravating person was Andrew’s twin.

“You’re worse than Kevin.”

“Burn!” Nicky yelled, to which the Foxes burst into laughter.

“Are you going to be done by sundown, or do I have to go take a long walk?” Wymack asked.

“We could be done already if someone stayed still and let me calibrate this thing to his weight,” Aaron said, shooting an aggravated look at Nathaniel.

Nathaniel made a show of getting his hands off the dashboard, and crossed his arms. Aaron, grumbling, went back to work, the upper half of his body hidden inside the machine’s hull. Nathaniel felt the moment when Aaron connected the shard to the engine; it set his teeth on edge, like he was chewing on thin sand, and the smell was unmistakable. The airlugger slowly rose from the ground, just enough for its anchors to disengage, bobbing gently in the air.

Aaron closed the hatch. “Just so you know, the shard-engine is only at half capacity, so don’t try anything too ambitious.”

Nathaniel wanted to throw into his face that if he really wanted to, he could make that engine do anything, wiring and physics be damned, but he opted for glaring. “Whatever,” he said.

Dan winked at him. “All right, recruit. Let’s see what you can do. Try to keep up.”

Nathaniel did.

They didn’t do anything fancy - no formations or battle plans. He just had to follow and imitate. It was easy, almost insultingly so. It was the most beautiful feeling in the world. The airlugger was light as a feather, answering to the gentlest nudge. The two sails overhead were taut and singing in the wind, reaching for the sun like wings. The Foxes threw playful taunts and barbed words at each other in equal measure, spurred on by Nicky and Aaron fighting on the radio. The sky was so blue it cut like a blade. He could taste the light and the crisp air on his tongue.

They tasted like a freedom barely out of reach. They tasted like damnation.

It was over far too soon. Nathaniel wanted to fly until sundown, until night fell, until dawn came - instead he veered dangerously fast, skidded way too close to the turf, and then gently settled the airlugger down.

“Show-off,” Andrew muttered, his own machine anchored next. Nathaniel grinned at him. Andrew stared him down as he made a show of slowly lighting a cigarette. When he blew the smoke in his direction, Nathaniel grinned wider. The other Foxes were busy talking with the colonel a few paces away, so Nathaniel took his chance.

“I thought you didn’t care,” he said.

“I don’t,” Andrew answered immediately. “But about what, exactly, are you talking about?”

“You prevented Dan from insulting Riko in public.”

“Dan has this complex. It’s called the paladin complex. Fitting for the woman who will most likely be the next Paladin, seeing as she’s basically Paladin Day reincarnate. Too bad she’s too stupid to arrive to that point alive.”

Cold washed over Nathaniel. He schooled his expression as best he knew, but he wasn’t fast enough. Andrew narrowed his eyes, instantly suspicious.

“Hey recruit! We’re not done with you!” Nicky called, sounding entirely too pleased and hyper for Nathaniel’s comfort. He scrambled to reach him, Andrew’s gaze burning on his back.

Nicky was fiddling with some large, flat cases. “So, absolutely rhetorical question, but you’re familiar with these beauties, right? Of course you are. Your father invented them.”

Nathaniel steeled himself and reminded himself that he knew this was part of the deal from the start, that it was just a weapon. A knight fought on the field mounting an airlugger and using a shardsword for melee combat. The one in the first case was a standard backsword - a heavy thing, almost a bludgeon, with one cutting edge. The second case held a cavalry sabre, elegantly curved, with the characteristic wider point, wicked and deadly.

(The third he didn’t even look at. It was a katana, the kind Riko favoured.)

“These are just standard issues, nothing fancy,” Nicky chattered on. He caught on how Nathaniel’s expression was getting darker and darker, and so talked even more animatedly. “I mean I’m sure you’re used to personalized swords but believe me, all those scammers who claim to be able to forge new shardswords? Scammers, as I said. No one can forge new ones because there are no new shards, and it’s not like you can recycle them. Your father might have been a traitor, but no one can say he didn’t revolutionize war forever, but he was also a clever bastard. Nobody even knows exactly what they’re made of, I myself only know what they do and how to maybe make them work - and making them work is my job! Hoping they don’t explode on me. Say, you don’t happen to know how to forge new ones, do you?”

Nathaniel wanted to punch him. For a moment he thought his smile and friendly - if a bit anxious - yapping was a façade, that he was being subtly cruel to get a rise out of him, but no. He really was saying the first things that crossed his mind, without thinking.

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Nathaniel said, deliberately slow.

Nicky laughed. Then he noticed Nathaniel’s unchanged expression and flat stare, and his smile fell.

“Ok wow, why are you making that face? We really don’t need another Andrew in this team. Go back being pretty,” Nicky said.

Kevin cringed and shot a panicked look in Nathaniel’s direction.

“Nicky, for the love of all spirits,” Dan hissed.

“What? He is cute!”

Andrew was on him in the blink of an eye, movements’ as sleek as a tiger’s, effortless, fluid, packed with power. A knife appeared underneath Nicky’s chin, until he was standing on his tip-toes to avoid its piercing tip.

“No, Nicky,” Andrew said.

“Oh come on, first Kevin, now him, too? You’re so greedy!” Nicky said in a strained voice, having no sense of self-preservation.

“I would tell him to back off if you weren’t so disgusting,” Aaron said, glaring at his cousin. “You’re mated, Nicky.”

“Hello? That’s not the point? Maybe the point is that Nicky should be less inappropriate?” Matt pointed out.

“Nicky? Inappropriate? Color me shocked,” Dan said. “I’m more surprised that Andrew cares about how Nathaniel is talked to, but I can’t say I’m against it.”

“Oh please. Don’t treat him like his delicate ears and sensibilities must be protected. If he doesn’t have thick skin already he’ll have to grow one,” Allison sneered.

The Foxes exploded into chaotic bickering again, Andrew silent at their centre, still holding Nicky at knife point with no one who dared to touch him. Nathaniel looked at him, standing perfectly still, unmovable and uncaring. He was reminded of the far-off, blueish profile of mountains, of immense glaciers. Something that looked still, but had the power to wipe out anything, and eventually would. Andrew was so close to Nicky, it almost looked like an embrace; but his eyes pierced right through his cousin, focused on something distant. It was a striking tableau. Such warm colors in his sun-kissed blond hair, his eyes glinting almost golden in the afternoon light; such deadly coldness in his body, taut and ready with the promise of violence.

Then his eyes focused - on Nathaniel - just as cold as before, but so much sharper - and Nathaniel understood who, exactly, that promise of violence was for.

He didn’t look away.

The Foxes around them were oblivious, save for one. Renee was watching him, too. For a moment, she looked the same as Andrew; a dark pool filled with monsters, seeing Nathaniel for who he was. A liar. A traitor. A threat. Then it was gone, and Renee was back.

It was over in an instant, but it left Nathaniel reeling, scrambling to find footing. He couldn’t afford to be mistrusted. He needed the Foxes to help him.

But if Andrew suspected something - and he did, he _did_ \- how could Nathaniel ever change his mind?

“You will leave the rabbit alone, Nicky,” Andrew said, staring at Nathaniel all the while.

Nathaniel needed to think. He needed time to adjust his plans. After a month of intermittent training with them, he had an idea of how the Foxes worked, what their internal hierarchy was, but he needed to know more, he needed to figure out how Aaron and Nicky fit into the equation, how much Wymack mattered.

He needed to tip the scales into his own favor.

He walked to the second case, left open and abandoned to the side, and picked up the sabre. The shard set into the grip was as irregular as was to be expected, protruding in three small spikes at the juncture between hilt and guard. The only shards he had ever seen with perfectly regular shapes were the Cornershard and the ones made directly from it by his father. Shards of second or third generation never had those unmistakable edges, so sharp they could cut inattentive hands. Nathaniel liked third-generation shards much better; they had never been touched by his father, who had conjured only the first generation ones. People like Nicky - shard engineers, popularly dubbed “alchemists” - could use the raw power of a first generation shard to create the others, but third generation was the threshold. Attempting more simply had the shard decay and become ash - and seeing as the only man able to conjure first generation shards was dead, such attempts were highly discouraged. With capital punishment.

“Shut up, all of you,” Wymack barked. “Andrew, back off.” After a few second of deliberation, Andrew did. Nicky pawed at his throat, but there was no blood to be found.

“And Nicky, the next time you forget your brain-to-mouth filter, I’m letting Nathaniel use you as a training dummy,” Wymack concluded.

“Whaaat,” Nicky said, smiling like he thought it was a joke. “Nathaniel would never!”

Nathaniel felt the weight of Andrew’s stare like it was something physical. He was somewhat surprised to see that Wymack gauging him, too. His father’s nightmarish grin twisted underneath the surface of his skin, but he pushed it down, freezing his expression into something he hoped was bland enough.

But then he thought, _Bland isn’t going to do me any favors. Bland won’t make them help me_ . For a moment, the solution was right there, a flash of sudden clarity. Andrew had said it himself: _You sent every single mothering instinct they have into overdrive, it seems_. If Nathaniel could show--- open the lid, just a little, and let the demons out just enough to---

Everything into him clamped viciously down at the thought.   

“So, kid,” Wymack said, “I’m also assuming you’re familiar with these sword. Now recite to me the three rules of the shard.”

His perfectly reasonable and normal tone calmed Nathaniel down somewhat; if Wymack sounded so calm, then Nathaniel’s control wasn’t faltering, and he didn’t look like he wanted to double over and throw up - which was how he felt.

“Rule one,” he said in what he hoped was a reasonably bored, normal voice, “never offer more than nightmares. Rule two, when you break rule one, don’t offer more than three ounces of blood. Rule three, when you break rule two, prepare to go insane.”

“Good. Have you ever had to go through mental decontamination? Ever broken rule one or two?”

“No, sir,” Nathaniel lied automatically.

Then he caught himself thinking, _But if I told them, would they be compelled to help me, later?_ and immediately, his lungs were flooded with shame and revulsion, and his chest burned with a simple, visceral _No_.

The confusion in his head was bewildering. This time his control slipped. Wymack’s eyebrows were climbing higher and higher. The Foxes had fallen silent, and all eyes were on him.

“Yes, sir,” he amended. “I was… one of my father’s test subjects. For the decontamination protocols.”

He couldn’t just _leave the lid ajar_ , it just wasn’t possible, there was a reason he had learned to crush-strangle-push down his thoughts so well. It was survival. It was either _don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it_ or hysterical panic attacks, and now he had pushed the lid open just a little, only it couldn’t be just a little and it wasn’t a jar. It was a bottomless well that would swallow him whole.

Dan looked slightly sick. “How old were you?”

“I don’t remember.”

He remembered his father’s hands over his own, forcing him to clutch the Cornershard, and then to slice his palms on the razor-sharp edge. He remembered the voice of the Mad God echoing in his mind, without words yet still compelling, commanding him to do something, anything, nothing at all, creeping into every fold of his mind, driving him insane.

It was his first memory.

He didn’t remember any decontamination tub, although there must have been. He vaguely remembered his mother’s hands on his forehead, cotton and silk underneath his back, a warm light dissipating the darkness in his mind.

Over, and over, and over again.

It was beyond painful to think of her, but he grabbed at the memory nonetheless. He was that desperate for a tether.

Aaron’s next words, barbed and scornful, were another. “What a sob story. Fishing for sympathy?”

Matt scowled at him. “Do you have to be such an asshole, Aaron?”

“Aaron, that’s uncalled for,” Renee added, her expression spelling out, _I’m so disappointed in you_.

“What, feeling threatened, orphan boy?” Allison asked, voice dripping fake concern.

Nathaniel ignored Andrew, still silent, still staring, eyes carving Nathaniel open rib by rib. Or so it felt. “What’s it to you, Aaron? You’re used to live in the shadow of other people.”

Aaron’s slew of insults went completely unnoticed. Andrew had exhaled, a little, barely-there huff of suppressed laughter, Nathaniel was sure of it. And Kevin was staring towards the entrance, and had gone sheet white.

“Riko,” he croaked.

Nathaniel’s heart shriveled and fell. Everything that had been warring inside him - fear and elation, shame and calculation - was blacked out, replaced by the devouring sense of _Riko being there_. He was followed by his trusted men, Jean at his side like always. In their wake was a group of dignitaries and ambassadors, walking to the pavillion erected for the evening on a distant side of the training grounds - the nice side with trees and well-tended hedges on the sides, not the sandy stretch reserved to the Foxes.   

Nathaniel didn’t hope for Riko to ignore them - ignore _him_ \- and neither did Kevin. Kevin looked ashen and ready to bolt. He gave off the same sense as an animal caught in a trap, eyes rolling in terror and paws nailed down. Riko watched them for a moment, and then lingered, shaking hands, conversing amiably, smiling. Taking his time, savouring it. He wasn’t so far as to not see Kevin’s abject terror, the Foxes’ sullen looks, shrouded in uncharacteristic silence. He was enjoying it.

Nathaniel felt, impossibly, calmer for it. He knew exactly what to expect. And for the first time, he was going to get an advantage out of it. A kind of dark, coldly distant rage settled into the tattered remains of him. He clung to it with all the desperation of a castaway caught in a maelstrom.    

What was new? He was nothing but an object to be consumed. For Riko, for the Empire, for the press, and now the Foxes. This time it was his sob story. His entire life was a sob story, he had plenty of material to emotionally manipulate them. He didn’t even have to tell them anything. Riko was going to do everything all by his lonesome.

His hate for Riko was so dark and powerful, for a moment he considered using the sword he still held in his hands. It would’ve been so easy, breaking rule number three. If he offered his mind up, the demon would consume him, but they always kept their end of the deal.

He slowly put the sword away, back into its case.

Riko walked to them, leisurely, smiling. Assured in his power to hurt as he pleased, without consequence.

Nathaniel often had to catch himself. If he thought too hard or too much about how glorious it would be when he finally killed Riko, he was sure to slip and do something stupid, like grabbing a shardsword and ruin everything. But he had to think about it, seldomly. It was the only thing that gave him strength.

He slanted a look towards Kevin. He wondered if he, or Jean, ever entertained similar thoughts. Somehow he doubted it.

Riko almost didn’t bother to salute Wymack; he completely ignored Dan - who was, technically, his peer in role - and all the other Foxes. He took in Kevin’s expression and dove in like a vulture on carrion. “Kevin, what are you doing here? I could have sworn you were following the scent of that negro alpha from the Western Islands. What was her name?”

“Theodora Muldani,” Jean supplied, unheeding of Kevin’s panic.

“Ah, yes. Such savage tastes you have. But she’s an alpha nonetheless. Are you up to the challenge?”

“It’s not like that,” Kevin whispered, but he knew it was wasted breath.

“No need to be shy about your needs, Kevin,” Riko said, grinning in a way that almost looked caring. “You’re an alpha who needs to be dominated, where’s the problem in that? We all have different tastes. Some need to go against their nature to find their satisfaction. It’s a free country, isn’t it?”

He turned to Nathaniel, slowly, his grin spreading equally slowly into something darker. He walked to him, drinking in the sight of Nathaniel’s body freezing in perfectly contained fear and violence. The best part had always been knowing Nathaniel wanted to fight back. Wanted, and would not. He wasn’t a broken down toy, pliant and unresisting. He had a fire in him, always smoldering beneath the ashes, ready to catch at any moment. Riko loved to see that fire grow into Nathaniel’s eyes, and choke it.

He laid a hand on Nathaniel’s neck, his thumb pressing lightly into the hollow of Nathaniel’s throat. He was close enough to smell the faint reek of sweat and dust mixed with Nathaniel’s sweet smell. He wrinkled his nose, and leaned in until his lips were brushing Nathaniel’s ear.

Nathaniel didn’t expose his neck in submission, nor turned his face away. He stared ahead and kept perfectly still.

“Whereas some of us,” Riko said, “have more refined tastes. Although you’d be hard pressed to believe that about me by looking at Nathaniel right now.”

Riko looked at Nathaniel’s comfortable clothes - slightly dishevelled and with patches of dust here and there - and his messy ponytail with distaste. “Are you done playing the soldier, little omega? You’re in dire need of a bath. I can’t show you like this to the ambassadors.”   

“I doubt the ambassadors are here to see me,” Nathaniel said.

“Don’t be modest now, Nathaniel. Word of your beauty has spread far and wide, of course they’re curious. Or more like salivating? You have to be careful. The gossip columns already paint you a vixen, and you know how these lesser nobles can get.”

“Boastful of nonexistent conquests and trying too hard to compensate for what they lack? Yes, I might know one of the kind after all,” Nathaniel said. The way Riko’s sadistic grin froze in place for a moment was the highlight of Nathaniel’s day.

Then pain exploded into his chest when Riko punched him in the solar plexus. Nathaniel’s gasp was choked by the strangling hold Riko had on his neck. Riko shoved him against the airlugger’s hull, the metal banging under Nathaniel’s back.

Dan surged forward, but Matt was quick to hold her back. “Stop it!” she yelled, and barely refrained from adding _you sick, disgusting bastard_! “Matt, let me go!”

“Dan, please,” Matt said. His chest ached with the raw need to do something, torn between the desire to protect Nathaniel from such brutality, and protect Dan from the consequences of her foolish, brave altruism.

“You better listen to your alpha, Wilds,” Riko said, deathly calm as Nathaniel struggled to breathe, his feet barely grazing the ground. “I would love to wipe this disgraceful team of rejects from the Academy’s roster.”

“ _You_ better listen to your alpha, Your Highness,” Dan hissed, “he’s the one who wants Nathaniel into the Academy.”

“Dan,” Renee cautioned, but she was keeping her eyes on Nathaniel, the conflict clear in the her features.

Kevin was the only one who could hope to physically hold Riko back and survive. Kevin was rooted on the spot, silent and terrified, looking between Andrew and Jean.   

“Dan, stop it,” Wymack said. He didn’t raise his voice, but it was heavy with authority, and a fierce, protective love.

“But---”

“That’s an order.”

Dan stopped struggling, and fell silent, but her eyes were still smouldering with fury.

“She’s right, you know,” Nathaniel hissed, “you can’t prevent me from coming here, you can’t go against Ichirou’s orders, and when we meet during the entrance exam, we will crush you.”

Riko banged Nathaniel’s head against the hull. “We’ll see about that,” he snarled.

Then he grabbed Nathaniel’s arm in a bruising grip, and pulled him forward. Nathaniel, dazed and with spots dancing in his vision, didn’t struggle.

But he didn’t forget to look at Andrew.

He was staring at him, impassive and unmoved. Nathaniel wasn’t surprised. Yet a part of him mourned.

Riko took him away.

Once they were out of earshot, Dan turned on Kevin. “You fucking useless coward!” She lunged towards him, but Andrew was in her path in a flash, knife at the ready.

“I can’t say I disagree,” he said. “Don’t.”

“What, you care about Kevin now?” Matt said, outraged. “You didn’t even flinch when Riko did that, but you protect _Kevin_?”

“Calm down, all of you,” Wymack said.

The weariness and defeat in his voice stoked Dan’s rage. “Calm down? How can I calm down after seeing that? How can you be so calm?”

“Do you think you’re helping him, behaving like this?” Wymack countered.

“To be fair, he definitely provoked him. He’s either crazy or a moron,” Aaron said.

“He’s a prince born and raised,” Allison said, like that explained everything. She rolled her eyes at the blank look that earned her from him. “He considers himself a peer of Riko’s, and not only in station. He was raised as an alpha. Riko is doing his best to break him and make him behave like an omega, but it’s obvious Nathaniel would rather die than submitting.”

Renee shook her head minutely. “I’m not sure that’s the case. There are dynamics we might not be privy to.”

“And in any case,” Wymack said, “it’s not our job to intervene.”

Dan looked at him like she didn’t know him. “Are you kidding me?”

Wymack fixed her with hard, stern eyes. “You’ve seen what Riko is willing to do in public. He thinks smacking an omega around is perfectly acceptable. Where do you think he draws the line in private? I’m telling you: nowhere. Alphas like Riko have no concept of limits, respect or boundaries, and Nathaniel is completely at his mercy. You’re not the one who has to live with him. Whenever you anger, or even just irritate Riko, you’re not the one to pay the consequences. Nathaniel is. You want to help him? Then keep your head down, teach him everything you can, and do your best during his entrance exam.”

Wymack waited to see if anyone else had something to say. Satisfied with their silence, he said, “Happy to know we have an agreement. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need some very good whiskey after what I had to witness. I suggest you also do your best to erase what you saw today. I don’t want to see any pity fest next time Nathaniel joins us. Stew on it if you must, but keep it for the entrance exam. You heard what Nathaniel said.”

Kevin groaned. “He’s an idiot, I can’t believe he’s still alive.”

“What do you care?” Dan asked. “You won’t even be on the team that day.”

“I haven’t decided that yet,” Kevin mumbled.

“Like you have the spine to decide it for yourself,” Dan quipped.

“You have no idea what it means to---”

For the love of all the gods,” Wymack groaned loudly. “Dismissed!” When Kevin and Dan kept glowering at each other, Wymack repeated, “I said dismissed!”

The Foxes scattered.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY  
> Airlugger: a kind of single-seat airship, with three sails, powered by a shard-engine.  
> Cornsershard: the original shard, from which all first generation shard are made. Retrieved by Duke Nathan Wesninski from an unknown location. The Duke revolutionized military technology and warfare through its use.  
> Noctiluca, the Moon Demon: a god revered in Neo Eudaimonia. Said to be the protector of the Hatford clan.  
> Shards: pieces made from the Cornershard. They power engines and weapons. Their use is strictly regulated, and is permitted only for military purposes. Since the death of Duke Wesninski, no one knows how to make more.   
> Sideracoronata (shortened to Siderai): a subset of the omega population of Neo Eudaimonia. They have strange powers that don't require the use of a shard to manifest - or "natural magic". They can awaken a similar sort of natural magic, short term, in people they have sex with, or people who force themselves on them.  
> Zagreus, the Night-Raging one, the Old One, the Mad God: a dead god buried deep underground, in a complex of ruins called the Chthonios.

“What do you mean, we should drop him?” Kevin asked, looking slightly sick.

Kevin knew exactly what Andrew meant. Kevin would always be a coward. Leave it to him to dangle Nathaniel in front of Andrew and hope Andrew would take pity on him, making a very convenient choice. A choice that meant Kevin didn’t have to do anything too difficult. Andrew felt the animal of his dark rage hiss and snarl and rattle its cage. He let it be a distant echo.

“I mean I don’t trust him. He’s a threat.”  

“Don’t you want to help him?”

“Why, because our sob stories match?” Andrew said, and studied how uncharacteristically emotional Kevin was being. Andrew was used to only two settings with him - haughty superiority or abject terror - so  _ this _ was new. If he thought Kevin had one empathetic bone in his body, Andrew would think he cared for the smartmouth’s situation.

Oh yes, he deserved that title. Couldn’t stop from snarking at Riko to save himself. Or wouldn’t he? Andrew had seen his behavior that first day, in the cloistered gardens. Riko had insulted and groped him, yet then Nathaniel hadn’t said a word. When Riko had ordered him to shut up, he had. Yet a few days before, he had made it a point to insult Riko in front of everyone.

And everyone was suddenly that much more ready to fuss over him.

Andrew understood the need to take little victories at any cost, when the alternative was obliteration, the complete destruction of the self. He had hit that point and passed it long ago. Was Andrew wrong? Was Nathaniel fighting against that point, too, or was he playing mental games with the Foxes?

One did not exclude the other.

Kevin coped in the usual way; he grabbed a bottle and poured himself a generous glass of vodka. Andrew waited in silence. Around them, the workshop was cast in almost crepuscular shadows. The metal shutters were slightly ajar, and dust tumbled in the blades of amber light. Nicky was at his worktable, whistling loudly to himself as he was wearing his noise-cancelling earmuffs. He pried the shard from Kevin’s sword with a pair of pincers, which he then placed gently on the vise gripping the sword, so that the shard hovered nearby the hilt’s chamber. He was careful not to damage the filaments connecting it to the internal mechanism of the weapon. He felt, more than heard, the faint hiss of it, like a shiver that set his teeth on edge. He shrugged it off - no weird feelings or sudden urges to slaughter meant everything was under control - and set to renew the isolation lining in the mechanism. He was completely oblivious to Andrew and Kevin’s conversation.

“We could re-negotiate the deal with Jeremy,” Kevin said, looking into his glass. “I’m sure he would---”

“You’re not listening. Nathaniel is dangerous. Plus, smuggling you out is a hassle enough. Smuggling him out of the cloistered wing? How many eunuch guards are hidden in those walls again?”

Kevin made a sound that was half choked sob and half sigh. “He would come with us if we asked, I know that. He’s not broken yet. He fights Riko every day, in all the ways he can.”

Kevin poured another glass and drained it.

“I don’t know how he does it,” he added in a whisper.

“I’m sure he’s flattered by your admiration.” 

_ As Riko rapes him everyday and you sigh in relief, because it means he’s not torturing you _ , he added mentally. There was something visceral, very deep inside him, that wanted to kill Riko violently and messily for it. But sentimentality was a luxury, and Nathaniel could use it far too easily.

“I can’t… leave him here,” Kevin said, his raw misery a surprise even for himself. But he lost courage even as he spoke, and his voice was reduced to a whisper again when he added, “How could I face Wymack, or Abby, ever again if I did?”

“You’re not your mother.”

Kevin flinched hard. No he wasn’t, that he knew, and that was exactly the problem. Sometimes he wondered if he could’ve been like her - legendarily brave, unflinching in the eye of danger, ready to take on the world and shape it with her own hands. Sometimes he wondered if her legend hid the struggles she might have faced, the defeats and frustrations and injustices. Sometimes he wondered if it was really Riko who beat it out of him, or if he simply never had it in the first place. 

He watched Nathaniel resisting and surviving every day, and it filled his lungs with self-loathing, and he drowned. 

He emptied another glass.

Nathaniel had been under Riko’s thumb for only two years.

Nathaniel had been subjected to far worse abuse than Kevin ever had.

The two thoughts chased each other in his head, each with its own measure of shame. 

“I just can’t, Andrew,” he said, quietly.

“How incredible. You developed a conscience. A conscience is useless if you don’t have the backbone for it, Kevin.”

“Andrew, please---”

“Shut up,” Andrew snarled.

Kevin hung his head. 

Andrew stared at his slumped shoulders, and hated him. Kevin was an insufferable asshole with anyone he deemed beneath him - which meant almost everyone - hurling insults, contempt and harsh criticism whenever he liked. But not even too deep beneath that surface, he was so easily scared it was laughable; and when it came to Riko, he folded like a delicate twig underneath a boot. Usually he berated Andrew for every little thing, fighting to the point of exhaustion to have Andrew do anything; he was unable to accept that Andrew simply wouldn’t do what Kevin wanted.

But as soon as Andrew took Riko’s place in Kevin’s life, Kevin fell utterly silent. All it took was a snarled order for it to happen.

Andrew hated it. He hated how well trained Kevin was. He hated the groveling coward Riko had made of him. He hated Kevin for making him a stand-in for his abuser.

His traitorous mind was ready to supply the perfectly-detailed image of bright, ice-cold eyes staring him down, filled with recklessness and defiance, of a lithe body enjoying the fatigue of training with relish, of auburn hair and golden skin shining and redolent with sweat. It haunted him, like an afterimage burned into his retinas.  

He hated him, too. 

Andrew steeled himself into perfect stillness, letting the anger recede. There was an abyss inside him, a monster than new no bounds that had swallowed him whole, chewed on his bones and crushed them agonizingly slow, and then spit out something that was little more than a shadow of who he had been. Control on what little he had left was both much easier and a matter of survival; some days, what was left was so thin and brittle that even thinking felt enough to extinguish him. 

Nathaniel  _ did not _ change that. Andrew wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly what was happening. He also knew that Nathaniel’s presence didn’t magically affect Andrew’s bad days. He  _ had _ had bad days during Nathaniel’s training sessions, and that’s what they had stayed; bad days. But Nathaniel had taken it at face value; he hadn’t pried or asked questions or even commented on it. He had respected his silence without reproach or despondency. He was such a conundrum. So bright, burning with determination. So silent, always on the lookout, waiting with baited breath for something to go wrong. So ready to verbally demolish Kevin, or Aaron - or any Fox if they pushed him enough, really - yet respectful of Andrew’s withdrawals. He was such a smart-mouth - Andrew hated thinking about the perfect shape of his lips as he called Aaron a useless waste of space - yet he knew, instinctively, how to talk to Andrew. The ease with which he figured that out would have been alarming if Andrew didn’t secretly enjoy it quite so much. Nathaniel always figured out the right balance between playful jabs and poignant questions, and knew when the act of asking was more important than receiving an answer.

Andrew’s life was a dark room of unyielding darkness. Nathaniel had placed a tealight in, and lighted it with steady fingers and steadier eyes.

A pathological liar with rabbit tendencies like him had no right to look so earnest - if a bit feisty. Or a lot feisty. If he didn’t already feel like his every emotional energy was being sucked inward and devoured, Andrew would have laughed at his own stupid, stupid interest.

An omega political hostage whose only virtue was a tongue as sharp and sweet as the blade of a knife.  _ And  _ he was a redhead.

So stupid.

“It’s just…” Kevin said, and Andrew knew he was going to launch into a long, rambly drunken monologue, and that he was going to remember every word, and it wouldn’t be any less pathetic a few years down the line. If they were both alive, that was.

“It’s just that I know he’s planning something, I know he would never let Riko win, and if we leave then what happens to whatever his plan is? I wish he would just tell me but of course he doesn’t, I’m not telling him either and we’ve been planning this for how long and - and that’s just it, isn’t it? One of us has to say something first, and I want that to be me, I want to save him even though I know he’d spit in my eye if I told him that, but I can’t bear the thought of what will happen to him once he gets his heat. It’s horrifying enough as is. It’s horrifying and I can’t stop it and I wish Nathaniel was different, weak or shallow or-or-or just- just more omega, but he’s not and I can’t not care, and I hate that I think that. And whatever is planning must be connected to entering the Academy, that must be some sort of first step, and we both know Riko will never allow it, but for some reason Ichirou is letting him and that scares me, Andrew. Anything Ichirou allows must be… be…” Kevin was lost for a few moments, his vision swimming. “Whenever I think about what it might be he promised Ichirou, I remember his parents. They were made for each other, no matter how much they hated each other in the end. Ruthless and heartless, the both of them. I keep telling myself he’s not the same, but he… I have no idea how far he’d be willing to go to be free. He can’t have the same control his father had on the Cornershard, he’d have slaughtered the entire Palace ten times over by now… Right?”   

Andrew ignored everything he said but a crucial detail.  _ Whatever he’s planning, it will fall through when we escape _ .

Andrew wondered what would happen  _ then _ only for a second. He didn’t care; he didn’t want to care. He knew the difference, and he hated Nathaniel. He could slither beneath Andrew’s defenses even when he wasn’t there. Andrew had to stop thinking about him and to focus more on what he would do to control the situation.

“Kevin.”

Kevin looked up sharply, misery and hope warring in plain sight on his features slackened by alcohol.

“We have to know what he’s planning.”

“What do you plan to do, torture the information out of him?” Kevin asked, and froze instantly at what he saw on Andrew’s perfectly still face. “I’m sorry,” he added in a rush.

Andrew slowly unclenched his fists, his fingers curling over the shape of his knives, hidden under the fabric of sleeves and armbands. 

“If we ever even entertain the idea of busting him out, too, you have to convince me you’re not going to collapse in terror down the way and change your mind halfway through. I’m not risking it,” Andrew drawled, slowly and unblinking.

Kevin felt sick. Fear pulsed through him in waves, flowing black and hot and devouring, ebbing until the fringes of his being were freezing to a brittle powder.

“I’m not interrogating him unless I’m sure you’re in, Kevin. Even with the added danger.”

_ Because he’s smart enough to realize the only reason why I’d do such a thing _ , Andrew thought. Too sharp for his own good, too unpredictable, too many lies spilling from his lips. And then. A small, feeble part of him whispered,  _ Too close to breaking to goad with such promises, only to then have Kevin shatter them. _

“So, Kevin?” he asked.

Kevin clasped his glass so hard it was a small miracle it didn’t shatter.

 

Nathaniel hissed as he dabbed an antiseptic salve on his bruised cheekbone. His face throbbed where Riko had hit him; he was going to have a black eye. It was rare for Riko to leave bruises where everyone could see them.

Nathaniel had expected things to change somehow - it was inevitable, and he had steeled himself to endure it. He had expected the pain. He was used to it. 

(Sometimes he thought that what Riko did wasn’t even that bad. Now that the Cornershard had fallen silent, nobody could ever get as creative as his father had been with its potential. Sometimes he felt something intangible - something deeper than flesh and pain - tear to shreds under Riko’s hands.

But Riko was slipping.

He was getting more violent, more paranoid. He was afraid Kevin was starting to shine too much during training at the Academy. He was afraid Ichirou would discard him as unnecessary. He was afraid Jean wasn’t spying for him with the same terrified fervor as before. He was afraid Nathaniel was going to really escape his grasp.

And if Nathaniel escaped him, if Riko couldn’t rape the Noctiluca’s power out of him, then the illusion of his superior strength would crumble like a castle made of cards.

There it was, the thought nagging the back of his mind, a sharp thin talon tickling his nape.

_ What happens to Kevin once I--- _

Nathaniel pressed hard on the bruise, focusing on the pain. 

He would not hesitate. He couldn’t afford to hesitate. 

Pages rustled in the wind. Nathaniel turned sharply, his eyes zeroing in on the newspaper Riko had scattered on the floor in a rage. The pages ruffled lightly again, then stilled.

All the windows were closed.

Nathaniel was still staring when a single page folded into itself. It took the shape of a sepia-colored, words-covered bird, fluttering its wings to keep afloat. It stayed there for a while, just bobbing in the air, before taking off gently, circling slowly.

So slow it would have been so easy to follow.

Nathaniel stayed rooted in the spot.

Trainers and soldiers might call it “life-infusion”, but he knew exactly what it really was. The demon trapped inside a swordshard was moving that paper bird, controlled by someone likely hidden nearby. The paper bird floated between the fireplace and the windows, seemingly waiting for Nathaniel to come forward. Nathaniel moved slowly towards the table. He kept the bird at the center of his vision, but what he was really watching was the entire room. There were no weapons he could use; the room was combed meticulously everyday to get rid of anything that might be used as one. Nathaniel grabbed the back of a chair.

A hand shot up from the grate in front of the fireplace, frantically signing to stop.

Nathaniel almost fell sitting on said chair. Pulse hammering and adrenaline skyrocketing, he looked about for signs of the guards. They would manifest at the minimum strange noise; but he could have sworn that  _ that hand _ …

He grabbed the chair and cautiously inched forward, trying to be as silent as possible. The fire was low, small flames dancing on the red-glowing embers. The hand slowly retreated, until only a finger was visible. The paper bird perched on the tip, and then they sank into the shadows beneath the grate. Nathaniel kept the chair in front of himself, and peered into the grate.

As he expected, Matt gazed back. He put a finger to his own mouth, asking for silence. Nathaniel wanted to punch him. If either of them had made even the tiniest of noise, the room would be filled with guards, Matt would be already dead, and  _ then _ … He scowled so hard Matt flinched.

_ What’s the stupid, reckless, moronic big idea? _ Nathaniel wanted to yell at him.

Matt grabbed the bars of the grate. Nathaniel’s terrified intake of breath sounded as loud as thunderclap, but before he could stop him, Matt had raised the grate. It moved without a sound; the only noise was the soft sigh of a little displaced ash falling down the hole. Nathaniel put down the chair. He looked at Matt, no grate dividing them anymore, and despaired.

Whatever he was offering, Nathaniel couldn’t accept it.

Matt’s expression softened in sad understanding, and hardened with resolve. He stretched his arm and handed the paper bird to Nathaniel. Nathaniel hesitated only for a second, but as soon as his fingertips brushed the paper, the bird unfolded on his own. He barely caught it before it fell. Inside was a message written in extremely neat letters, almost print-like in their perfection. The words looked scorched over the newspaper print. They read,

 

_ Follow them out, it’s not the first time we do this. Kevin has gone out with us before, and he’s still alive, isn’t he? But don’t get too excited. It’s only for tonight. Come, or you can say goodbye to the Foxes, and whatever plan you need them for. - A _

 

Nathaniel’s chest was filled with hope and terror, sloshing and crashing inside it, flooding his ribs with cold and then warm waves, cold and then warm again, so fast he felt sick with it. He looked at Matt again, who beamed at him, beckoned him.

Like it was so simple.

No matter what, Nathaniel needed answers. He was absolutely fucking sure there had been no secret passage underneath the fireplace before. If it was there before and he had never noticed it… A hysterical laugh bubbled up and almost escaped him.

He needed answers, but he couldn’t speak there. He had to follow Matt and then grill him. 

Possibly before he saw Andrew, because when he met him, he was going to throttle him. And Kevin. 

Oh, Kevin was going to  _ suffer _ .

Nathaniel jumped down the hole. He expected Matt to move out of the way; instead he caught Nathaniel mid jump. Nathaniel instinctively locked his arms around Matt’s neck, and for a suspended moment, everything was amplified and crystal-clear. Nathaniel felt Matt’s hands folding gently over his ribs, and his arms then curling protectively around Nathaniel’s back; he felt the muscles in Matt’s shoulders tense; and his nose was half-buried in Matt’s neck, and he didn’t smell of arousal and the promise of pain, but only, very slightly, of apprehension, and of Dan, and a little bit of the other Foxes, and he was so warm Nathaniel was alight with the need to crawl underneath his skin and hide there. 

Nathaniel pushed him away so hard, Matt’s head hit the wall of the already narrow space. Matt gasped in pain, and they both froze, listening. When no guards burst into the room, they both relaxed slightly. Matt shot Nathaniel a look that was too many things Nathaniel didn’t want to deal with - pleading, sad, hurt, pitying. 

And earnest. 

So earnest. That was the worst of it all. And it was going to get worse once Matt noticed Nathaniel’s bruise, which he couldn’t see in the near dark.

Matt signed to stay silent - not that it was necessary - and to follow him down a very narrow staircase; so narrow, in fact, that Nathaniel doubted Matt could fit comfortably on the way down. It looked like the kind of staircase to be hidden in the interspace between two walls, the stone steps uneven, the walls leaning in until they seemed a breath away from strangling them. Nathaniel walked down with caution, both hands braced on the walls. He turned to look at the hidden entrance, and he saw it. The walls didn’t just look like they were leaning in on them. As they walked down, they leaned and leaned until the light through the grate was just a narrow strip, then just a sliver, and then it was gone. They plunged in almost complete darkness, the only source of light a distant glow at the bottom. When they reached the bottom, they found a round hatch. Matt crouched to open it. When he had both hands on the handle, he looked up. The room was barely lit - the glow was actually a single tunnel lamp - but it was enough to see how shaken Nathaniel was. And with a start, he noticed the bruise. Nathaniel could feel the heat of it, the skin tender and growing taut.

“It’s okay,” Matt said in the gentlest tone he could muster, like he was soothing a spooked animal.

“It is not,” Nathaniel grinded out through gritted teeth. “What does he think he’s doing?”

Matt lowered his eyes and busied himself with opening the hatch.

As soon as he did, Dan’s voice rose up, a whisper of smoke. “Everything okay?”

“Yes,” Matt whispered back. He looked back to Nathaniel, and was met with a wall of mistrust. He was clearly not going to move. “Could you please come up here a sec?”

Dan signed to Allison and Renee to stay put, and climbed up. When her head emerged, she looked around for Nathaniel, and found him in a corner, looking as aggressively shut-off as when Kevin badgered him for underperforming and not working hard enough. Her eyes lingered only for a moment on the extensive fresh bruise underneath Nathaniel’s left eye. She climbed up. “What is it?” she asked, in that way of hers that managed to be both abrasive and fond.

_ What is it?! _ Nathaniel wanted to yell at her. Instead he asked something else, giving himself time to calm down, to think. “How did he do this?”

He knew the answer. Everyone held a specific affinity with the shards, an affinity for certain kinds of magic over others; that affinity didn’t translate as any set of standard abilities - magic was much too chaotic for that - but a certain sense of commonality, certain patterns being repeated across shards users, were easy to spot. Nathaniel knew them all, even the rarest of them.

“Andrew is a render,” Dan said. “Do you know what that means? It’s a pretty rare kind of shard-user. He can cut space. He can create passages where there are none, or stretch a distance as he likes.”

“You should see him teleporting behind an opponent. It’s pretty terrifying,” Matt added, trying to lighten the mood. 

_ Someone who could escape anything, to anywhere _ , Nathaniel thought.  _ Someone who could free anyone, if he so desired _ . 

Or was somehow cajoled into doing it.

Oh, he was going to  _ kill _ Kevin.

“Why are you doing this?” Nathaniel asked. He did his best to control himself, but still his voice came out wrong; too low, too deliberately slow. “Scratch that, why is Andrew doing this? And since when does he call the shots? I thought you were the captain, Dan.”   

“Hey, I don’t like this either,” Dan said, a long-suffering scowl darkening her face. “I’m not going to lie to you, Nathaniel. This is a test. But I won’t let anyone hurt you, and neither will Matt, or Renee, or Allison. I can’t vouch for Andrew’s lot but we’ll keep them in line.”

Nathaniel didn’t think about tests or hurting himself or any other such trivialities. He didn’t even care about what Andrew might want or do to him. The only thing he could think about, the only thing that mattered, was that he was  _ out _ . It was the only thought possible, the only thing existing, expanding inside him until it occupied every crevice of his brain, his eyes, his mouth, his lungs, everything.

He was out, but they weren’t there to free him. 

Nathaniel swallowed. “Don’t you think it’s the utmost cruelty, to offer me this and then expect me to go back up there?” 

“I’m sorry,” Matt interjected. “If it’s any consolation, we did discuss about this endlessly. I almost punched Kevin for it, actually. I know Andrew has motives of his own, but you can believe me when I say that Wymack and Dan have thought about your well-being first and foremost. You can believe that, right?” 

“In the end, we thought… One night of freedom was still better than nothing at all,” Dan added. She was unusually subdued when she said that.

Nathaniel stared at them for a long, long time. He didn’t know if it was enough. He didn’t know if, instead, it could be the one thing that was too much, the one thing that would make him snap.

(Other than that other thing he never thought about.)

Why should he go? Why should he put himself in the Foxes’ hands to this degree?

Yet a shift had occurred, he knew. At first, going to training was like coming up for oxygen. But after a while… training, the freedom, the air and the sun had become too entangled with the Foxes to exist as separate ideas. The Foxes had become his oxygen. 

The wind whispering in the airlugger’s sails, carrying their taunts and laughter.

The light glinting off their blades, the warmth of sun-kissed, calloused hands patting his shoulder, or ruffling his hair, or joining his own in a high-five. 

(He had forgotten what it was like, to be touched without malicious intent.)

The sweat, the bruises, the strength flowing again into him.

Loud and abrasive and confrontational. Made of jagged edges and barbed wire - just like he was. And overwhelming, sometimes. But at the center of the chaos they were, there was always a stillness, a solid, unmoving rock.

In the sunlight, Andrew’s eyes turned to liquid amber, and his hair was alight with gold. When he had noticed, Nathaniel had stared for a little longer than usual. Andrew had noticed, and he had said a single, glacier-cold word. 

“Staring.”

Nathaniel had to know. He had to know what this was about, what Andrew wanted.

He told himself he had to know in order to adjust his own plan, in order to outsmart Andrew. It sounded feeble even in his own mind.

Nathaniel stepped forward.

When they went down the hatch and the ladder, Renee was waiting for them a the bottom. She was kind enough not to raise her lantern when Nathaniel came down, even though she noticed his bruises. Allison wasn't as thoughtful.

"I'm going to strangle that midget asshole," she hissed, turning Nathaniel's face one way and then the other. Nathaniel almost shrugged her off – a reflex, the ghost of too much pain from too many different hands taking hold – but he couldn't deny the guilty pleasure the Foxes' outrage brought. It was nice, if smothering sometimes.

“I’m fine,” he said.

"Come on Allison, we have to get him changed," Dan urged.

"Changed?" Nathaniel asked.

"Do you  _ want _ to get caught?" Allison said. "Because I don't for sure, and those clothes don't help in that department. Also, they're ugly," she added, pinching a fold of Nathaniel's robe between thumb and forefinger.

"Riko chose them," Nathaniel said.

"That's why they're ugly."

" _ Allison _ ," Dan hissed.

They followed her down a dark corridor, Renee's lantern the only source of light; but they knew their way well, and knew all the points were Nathaniel had to watch his footing, knew where all uneven stones where.

"Where are we?" Nathaniel asked.

"Abandoned service tunnel," Matt answered. "It was part of the old Palace foundations, when the building was much smaller. When they built the new passages for the servants, they filled this one with rocks and left it where it was. In reality it doesn't even reach behind the walls now, but the other end is clear. Abby lives in the house right above the entrance, it used to be a servants' quarter. Now it's just at a conveniently close distance from the Academy, so they rent it to her, since she's medical personnel and all."

"Convenient," Nathaniel repeated. "Are you seriously involving Abby in this?"

"Abby will be out tonight. But she approves, of course," Renee said.

"The only one against this was Kevin, the asshole," Matt grumbled. "Well, and Aaron, but for some reason I really can't imagine, Aaron hates your guts."

"Must be Nathaniel's sunny personality," Allison sneered.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nathaniel deadpanned, thinking back to the last time he had told Aaron to take his codependent insecurities somewhere else.

The Foxes snickered.

When they climbed up another ladder, the house was dark and silent. Allison pushed an armful of clothes into Nathaniel's arms and locked him into the bathroom.

"You're lucky I had already brought a hat," she said from the other side of the door.

"A hat won't hide the bruise," Nathaniel said, buttoning up the white shirt.

Allison sneered. "Please. Nobody will care about that where we're going. If anything it will make you fit better."

"Are we going slumming?"

"Don't let Dan hear that, Prince Wesninski. She will kick your ass, working class-style."

Nathaniel stopped mid-motion as he put on the black vest. He could see a blur out of the corner of his eye; his reflection in a mirror. Even now, long-haired and covered in bruises that screamed his shameful powerlessness, he looked too much like his father for him to bear.

The silence stretched for so long that even Allison felt compelled to soften the blow. "You should take pride in your name. Not because of who gave it to you, but because it's yours."

"Drop it, Allison."

"Whatever. Are you done?"

"Do I really have to wear the carnation? And why is the necktie red, this is the opposite of subtle, and---"

Allison threw the door open. "I'm going to let Dan kick your ass. Scratch that, I'm going to let her restrain you as  _ I _ kick your ass. You should be wailing at the drabness of that ensemble, not complaining about subtlety. What kind of aristocrat are you?"

"An aristocrat who would like to live, maybe?"

“Believe me, where we are going? Dressed like this, no one will tell you apart from the walls,” she said, eyeing the cheap, not-shimmery and definitely not flowing-like-a-dream-speckled-with-jewels fabric with disgust. The only note of flair - if it could be called that, and Allison wouldn’t - was the black-on-black roses pattern on the vest, and that was it. “Now stop being such a drama queen,” she said, pushing a wide-brimmed hat into his hands, “that’s what Kevin is for. Sit down.”

Nathaniel didn’t tell her exactly who he thought was being a drama queen, and sat down on a stool. Allison picked up a brush and started to untangle his hair. Nathaniel hated how long it was. Riko had forbidden him from cutting it. He always made sure that Nathaniel’s room was stocked with fancy lotions and oils. Nathaniel avoided using them as much as he could, but the more he tried, the more Riko seemed able to tell - and get angry about it, and then getting even more controlling. It was  _ his _ hair, Nathaniel thought, hands tightening over the hat’s brim. He hated the looks he got for it. He would dye it if he could, make it the most boring shade of brown he could find, a shade that would send Riko in a murderous rage---

The stab of terror felt like all his ribs were smashed in, caving until he couldn’t breathe. If he started to think of Riko now, here,  _ outside _ , he was going to lose it.   

\--- a shade that would horrify Allison. She would call it mousy, and affronting, probably.

Allison could smell his anxiety, but didn’t say anything. She slowed down her brushing, letting the wooden teeth graze gently against his scalp, running her fingers through the wavy locks. Nathaniel let himself relax into it, accepting her silent comfort. She paused only to retrieve a small packet from the cabinet and put that, too, into his hands. 

“That’s for later. Don’t worry about him for tonight.”

It was scent-erasing lotion. He only had to wash with it and then roll in his own bed, which always smelled of Riko, and Riko would never be able to tell he had been with the Foxes.

Hopefully. 

He placed the packet on top of his discarded clothes, folded neatly on the vanity.  

Allison coiled his hair tight almost on top of his head, setting it in place with a hair tie and bobby pins. When she grabbed the hat from Nathaniel’s hands and put it on his head, it hid his hair almost completely. Then she pushed it over his eyes, just enough to hide him a little. 

Not nearly enough, Nathaniel thought, but it was better than nothing.

“All ready now,” she said with a rare sneer-free smile. “Let’s go meet the monsters.”

 

The cabaret was the most riotous thing Nathaniel had ever seen in his life. He had seen battles, even had been at the center of one during the storming of the Palace, but this was a  _ riot _ . He had thought all those hours listening to the radio had been enough to give him a good idea of what a cabaret was like, with the dancing girls and dirty songs, with the mixing of working class and slumming rich and their fights, but this was something else. It wasn’t just girls dancing, it was girls and boys either dressed to show their knickers or barely dressed at all. And he couldn’t tell if the patrons were fighting, per se, but that was only because they were so noisy and chaotic, swelling and crashing like opposing tides, that it was impossible to say. Everyone seemed to be eating, yelling, drinking, laughing and singing at the same time, and the  [ music ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEWuZ0QBvlo) ! Nathaniel had never heard jazz live before, and he had used to think it couldn’t be nearly as subversive - a mortal danger to order and morals, even - as some critics claimed it to be. Sure it sounded much more lively than what they used in aristocratic parties, but what could be the problem with that? But he could see exactly what those people meant now. The band playing was a mix of white and black musicians - not even all black, a  _ mix _ ; Nathaniel almost expected police to burst in yelling “Miscegenation!” - and from the smells mingling in the air with too much smoke and heat and sweat, it was very obvious the place wasn’t segregated by presentation. Nathaniel had never being to a place where alpha, beta and omega smells were so mixed; the air was so heavy it hit him like a brick, like it was getting to his head.

If it was a promise of freedom, he couldn’t see how it could work for him. Already his skin was crawling, and he scanned the crowd carefully for any sign of an alpha smelling his trail, or even just a beta - who could trust anyone in a place smelling like that?

Did Andrew  _ like _ this place? Or were they here only because the chaos guaranteed no one would look twice in their direction?

Nathaniel wondered if walking closer to Dan and Allison - sure, Dan was a beta, but it was hard to remember that most of the time - would make him look weak, more like prey. He kept his distance and followed them through the maze of tables, narrowly avoiding two dancers - he honestly couldn’t tell their gender - running to a group of aristocrats and sitting in their laps, laughing. Andrew and Kevin were seated at a corner table on the first floor, overlooking the rest of the cabaret. Nathaniel took in the closeness of two set of stairs, the windows overlooking the roofs outside, so close you could reach them with a jump. 

“Kevin, where are the drinks?” Dan asked. “I can’t believe this, are you actually on the path to recovery?”

“Fuck off, Dan,” Kevin answered. Judging by his pout, he was already quite drunk. 

“I’m guessing Nicky and Aaron are fetching them,” Renee said, looking around. “Let’s just wait for them.”

“You wait if you want, I’m fetching myself a dancer to spoil. Better yet, I’m fetching myself the étoile to spoil,” Allison said, scanning the crowd.

“Thought you had dissipated all your family’s money already,” Matt asked

“Not even close. Those idiots wired me money again with one of their weepy letters. ‘Oh sweet child, please come home, we still have your wedding dress ready, certainly we can convince someone to overlook all this and marry you’. Ha! How thoughtful and loving of them,” Allison said. Then she spotted the main dancer making the rounds of the tables, and took off.

“I don’t know how you bear that,” Dan told Renee.

Renee laughed softly. “You don’t have to worry about me. Allison just has peculiar ways to vent her frustrations.”

“By showering people with money? Why can’t she vent her frustrations on me?” Matt asked.

“By showering with money people her parents will hear about, and will greatly disapprove of because they’re low-born or disreputable,” Renee answered.

“You say that like Allison’s parents see a difference between being low-born and disreputable,” Kevin said.

Just then, Nicky arrived with a tray overflowing with drinks. “Guys, did I just see Allison put out a guy’s cigar in his own drink? What the fuck is she up to now?”

“Oh man, did she?” Matt asked, leaning over the rail in the hope of seeing her.

“She was after the étoile, he probably complained or something,” Dan said.

Nicky laughed in that boisterous, too-happy way that said he was so nervous, he was ready to vibrate out of his skin. While everybody dove into the drinks, Nathaniel watched Andrew. He was smoking a cigarette; when he flicked some ash off it, his movements were so slow as to look lethargic. His gaze, unblinking, hooded, erased everything around them. Nathaniel stopped noticing the loud music and clashing smells. 

Andrew’s emptiness was the void of space - cold, unforgiving, filled with stars and a deathly kind of beauty.

Nathaniel sat down.

“Look who’s here,” Andrew said in that slow, deliberate way that Nathaniel already knew so well. “A lost sheep in need of a new name for the evening.”

Nathaniel jolted. Of course; he couldn’t be  _ Nathaniel _ tonight. “Does it make any sense to discuss it in public, where anyone could hear?”

“Do you see anyone caring?” Andrew asked. Nathaniel had to admit it was hard to imagine how anyone could spy on them, or even just hear them by accident, when everything was so loud and chaotic.

“Can I give suggestions?” Nicky asked enthusiastically, raising his hand. “It must be something suitable for this sordid place, right? Something that screams ‘pretty boy fallen from grace into the slums’!”

“For fuck’s sake, Nicky, shut up,” Aaron said. “And stop hitting on him, I already have to see you and Erik be disgusting with each other every sunday and that’s more than enough.”

“You’re just jealous.”

Nathaniel didn’t listen to their bickering. He had fantasized about escaping and changing his name, a few times, so long ago - or, it felt like a long time ago. It felt like a fantasy for small, naive children. With his title and his powers and Riko’s pride on the line… Escaping felt like a stupid thought not worth contemplating.

The only way out was death - either his, or the Moriyamas’. 

Andrew exhaled a plume of smoke. “Stop that.”

Nathaniel scowled at him. “Stop what?”

“Don’t play dumb. This is just one night. You’re asked to think of a name and you’re already spiraling down. It’s like you never thought of escaping in your entire life.”

“I haven’t,” Nathaniel said, and stared at Kevin.

Kevin started to chug down drink after drink, as fast as he could.

“Come on, think of a name!” Matt interjected, smiling encouragingly. 

Nathaniel thought of Abram, but it was too close to his mother and her painful absence. He had always hated having his father’s name, had always wished he could erase him from his life and his past. A thought that was so dangerous he avoided confronting it even now, two years after Nathan’s death.

“Neil,” he said. “You can call me Neil.”

“All right Neil, drink up!” Nicky exclaimed, pushing a glass into Neil’s hands. When he saw Neil was eyeing the drink dubiously, Nicky groaned. “Come on, it’s not even alcohol, I swear.”

Indeed it didn’t smell like alcohol, so Neil drank, but as little of it as possible, watching the others to time the moment he put the drink back down. Andrew met his eyes and raised a single eyebrow as if to say,  _ You’re not subtle, Neil _ .

The Foxes emptied one glass after the other - save for Renee - and then left for the dance floor. Even Kevin stood up, eyes lost and unfocused, and followed them. Neil would have made fun of him for being smashed so soon, if Aaron hadn’t been lingering, and staring at Neil like he was hoping to set him on fire by sheer force of will. 

“What?” Neil asked. He was there to talk to Andrew and tell Kevin exactly what he thought of him and his little plan, not to deal with Aaron’s codependency issues.

“If I was a field cadet in the entrance exam, I would throw you to the students playing enemy,” Aaron said.

Neil knew Aaron hated him, but that was a new low even for him - especially considering Aaron, too, was an omega, and should know better that throwing around threats like that. “You’re such a bitch, Aaron, they’d go after you first,” Neil said, voice hoarse.

“Fuck you!”

“No, fuck you, where the hell did that even come from?”

“Aaron has a problem,” Andrew interjected, silencing his brother, “in which he can’t accept reality, and would rather blame his stupid life choices on anyone but himself.” He waved at his twin in dismissal, looking supremely bored. Aaron left without another word, after shooting a final look filled with loathing to Neil.

“What the fuck was that?” Neil asked.

“Aaron just realized that his dream of graduating the Academy and having a career based on merit is just that - a dream. You would know everything about that, wouldn’t you?” Andrew said.

“Is that sarcasm?”

“You know the Foxes are doomed to fail.”

Nathaniel felt his blood turn to ice. Everything was silent, only one thought ringing in the void:

 

_ does he know? _

 

“The emperor has no use for the Day regiment. He doesn’t care about Wymack’s attempt at recruiting more omegas. He’s not actively preventing it, but he doesn’t need to. Prestige, funding, facilities; Ichirou has been denying all these for years, without any noise or protest rising. Nobody cares about the Paladin’s legacy.”

Neil knew it was true. One fancy ball a year was just a token effort. No money was raised for the regiment that day. And the regiment itself wasn’t under the spotlight at the event - there was no recognition given to Wymack, or his Foxes, or even Kevin. Someone watching from the outside would never know that, theoretically, the party was thrown for them.

Neil also knew it was truer than Andrew or Kevin suspected.

Andrew crushed the cigarette into an overflowing ashtray. “Which is a problem for me.”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“I don’t. But I have a promise to keep. I promised Aaron I would get him into the Academy, then the regiment, all the way to the start of a beautiful career in engineering an omega could never dream about. I take him there, he sticks around and does as he’s told; that’s the deal.”

Neil could lie, feign ignorance. But he knew he couldn’t get away with it, not with complete lies, not with Andrew. He had to be careful, to put in enough truth to trick him. Maybe even enough to have Andrew give up a few of his secrets. “Ichirou planned on disbanding the regiment after Kevin graduated.”

Because if not even Kayleigh’s son would join them, they’d be a failure. And Kevin would never dare to go against Riko’s wishes. Neil used to worry about that, about how close Kevin had become with the Foxes, how he might choose to join them. Riko would kill him if he did, and Ichirou would not stop him. 

(Or worse, Ichirou would not let him die yet, and would let him join the Foxes, and then his death would be Neil’s fault.)

Now he felt like a fool for worrying. Kevin had had machinations of his own for who knew how long, and Neil had been blind to them.

“But now he doesn’t.” 

“No.”

“Because of you.”

It wasn’t a question. “I made him an offer.”

“Of course you did. Otherwise you wouldn’t be allowed to train with us. The problem isn’t what your offer was. The problem is I’m one hundred percent sure you’ll lie about it. You play the victim well enough for the Foxes - standing there, silent, letting them coo over your bruises. You’ll have to be a little more convincing with me.”

Neil grasped his glass so hard he thought it might shatter. “I don’t make up those bruises.”

“No, you don’t. You also let the Foxes fill in all the gaps you create. You’re lying by omission.” 

“Like Kevin?”

Andrew stared at him in silence. Neil had half hoped to take him by surprise, but deep down he knew that wasn’t possible. If Andrew had wanted to keep his scheme a secret, Neil wouldn’t know about his abilities. 

“You let Matt tell me about your power,” Neil pressed on. “What makes you so sure I won’t tell Riko or Ichirou about what you have planned?”

“You wouldn’t tell Riko a thing.”

“True. That leaves Ichirou. You have someone who can manipulate memories at your disposal, haven’t you?”

“That, or feeding anything to that particular monster would be just too dangerous for you to try.”

This time, it was Neil who fell silent.

Andrew rolled his left hand, showing the wrist. He slipped his fingers under the cuff of his shirt, and slowly extracted one of his knives. It was a different one than the one Neil remembered. He wasn’t surprised to see it had a shard encased in the hilt. 

“Where did you even get that? All shard weapons are military issue,” Neil asked, voice thick with a fear he was fighting hard to hide. He didn’t have to ask who knew how to manipulate memories. He wondered who had taught him. As far as Neil knew, the imperial army didn’t know anything about blood magic - they were forbidden from even attempting it.   

“Focus on what matters, Neil,” Andrew said, contemplating the blade. “Whatever you offered Ichirou, I assume it is a threat. Whatever Ichirou plans for the Foxes, I assume it is a threat. Aaron doesn’t want to see it, but there’s no future for him here. If we just left, we’d be back to what we were before. Do you have any idea what it’s like, to live in a workhouse?”

Neil knew better than to believe what the government said about such facilities. They were supposed to be places of work for the destitute; a place where working conditions were intentionally as harsh as possible - to encourage people to seek work elsewhere. They were also intentionally not segregated, to make them as unappealing as possible. They were a preferred topic for lurid opinion pieces and novels on the wretched lives of omegas.

“You would think people would do anything to stop working in one. Even when they’re orphans and have nowhere else to go. But do you know what working houses have, that no other place offers?”

“Free education,” Neil said.

“Some of them, yes. The worst ones. The ones that were bought out by rich people, who now use them to have cheap labour. People in there are basically slaves. But they get the opportunity to send their charges to school. It’s a great way to make sure they try their hardest to stay.”

Neil shook his head. “Where you in charge of Aaron? You’re his twin. That shouldn’t be your responsibility. What about Nicky?”

“Nicky came later. That’s not what you should be focusing on. Focus on this: I’ve done what was necessary to make sure Aaron’s lack of spine would send him to an early grave. I made sure we were accepted into that workhouse, I made sure he stayed in that school, and I made sure he entered the Academy. Now that he’s the best of his course, it’s time to move on. There is only one thing missing - something that would make him a welcome asset, not a nameless face in a sea of emigrants from the Empire.”

“You think Kevin will have the courage to vouch for you to Viscount Knox? He would never make himself that visible if he fled. He’d cower in a dark corner all his life, hoping that Riko won’t find him.”

“No, Kevin wouldn’t. But you would.”

Neil was starting to understand.This was what Andrew wanted out of him. Political leverage. The guarantee that they’d have protection in the Free Marches. Neil wouldn’t be surprised if Thea Muldani was part of their plan somehow.

“Kevin is just the son of the Paladin. Prestigious, but politically useless. But you? You can’t hope to escape the Moriyamas. If you were to leave, you’d have to fight them. And the Foxes would join you.”

“Not Kevin.”

“Even Kevin.”

Neil didn’t argue the logic of it all, the rationality of even telling him this much. It didn’t matter if Andrew thought he could erase his memories. Maybe he would do it anyway - excising the memory of having been outside, in this very club. He’d rather convince Andrew that he believed him.

He had a moment of vertigo. Did he? Did he believe Andrew? Was he going to help him, help the Foxes, escape with them? What overwhelmed him then was something too big for him to understand. It was a flood, an entire ocean pushing him down and drowning him - yet how sweet it was, such sinking - and how dangerous. 

“You have no idea what you’re asking of me.”

“Enlighten me.”

Neil knew, then, that he had him - problem was, didn’t Andrew have him too?

“Have you heard about my mother’s death?” Neil asked after a while.

“Was it so gruesome that now you have nightmares about it?” Andrew said, as callous and uncaring as always.

“She didn’t die. She escaped. And if I was to leave the Palace, she would kill me.”

Andrew fell silent, but it wasn’t in shock. He didn’t seem fazed by the idea of a mother wanting to kill her only son.

“I broke a promise I made to her. I stayed too long in the Palace, with her enemies, for her to trust me ever again. And she knows I could give them a weapon they could use against her, the weapon my father used to wipe out so many of his enemies, and then even his own Lord.”

“She told you to kill yourself.”

Neil was puzzled for a moment. Of everything he just said, was that what Andrew decided to focus on? “Of course she did.” 

“Of course she did,” Andrew repeated, exasperated. For a man planning to escape an entire Empire’s strangling grasp on his own, Neil could be incredibly lacking in the self-preservation department. It was like he thought he didn’t deserve to be free, and deserved to die instead, for an idiotic promise made who knew how many years ago. If he was to bet, Andrew would say it was when Neil was a child. “What weapon?” Andrew asked.

“The Cornershard.”

“Didn’t Ichirou steal that from your father’s dead grasp?”

Neil couldn’t help it. The memory was just too - he wouldn’t say  _ good _ , not with what came after, but it was something. Something dark, and warm, and laughing. He smiled his father’s twisted smile. “Yes. But the Cornershard was tied to my father’s life,and when he died, it stopped working. I offered to find a new one.”

Andrew didn’t look impressed. “Can you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t the Moriyamas force you to do it before?”

“They thought it was impossible. My father unearthed the Cornerstone from the depths of the Chthonios - an ancient ruin buried deep underground. It’s in a secret location on the border between Czernoskie and Eudaimonia, teeming with spirits and ghost. Plus, the place is cursed. Anyone who comes too close goes mad. But I know how to deal with it. Did Kevin tell you what I am?”

“A Sideracoronata. I don’t see how sex magic is going to help.”

“Spirits, could you be a little more subtle?” Neil said, shame reddening his cheeks. He was, however, quite impressed that Andrew remembered the entire word, not just the shortened version. “It’s not just that. The Sideracoronata lineage of Eudaimonia has been blessed by the Noctiluca, the Moon Demon. If Riko--- if Riko, huh, left me alone for at least a month, I’d be able to enter the Chthonios. I could even bring people with me, protect them from the curse.”

“A Moon Demon blessed your family?” Andrew asked, sceptical.

“Look, it’s a complicated theological matter, do you really care?”

Andrew decided not to comment on Neil’s flustered state. There was too much to unpack there, too much Andrew could - wanted to - understand. He was just thankful the heady air of the cabaret masked Neil’s scent. Andrew never claimed to make good decisions, and Neil was no exception.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Andrew said. “Keep Ichirou off our trail. Escape with us. I don’t care if this deal with finding a new cornershard is even real - give it to Knox or don’t. Either way, he’ll want you in his court.”

“What if the Viscount decides I’m too much trouble, that he can’t afford to go to war with both the Empire and Neo Eudaimonia?” 

“Don’t let Kevin hear you, slandering Jeremy’s honor like this.”

Neil scowled. He knew of the Viscount’s fame, but he had always assumed it was a front. No one in power could be like that and survive… right?

The knife was still on the table, Andrew’s hand resting lightly on it, half-concealing it from view. “Why do you need the Foxes?”

Neil chose his words carefully. “Anyone who comes too close to the Chthonios gets… changed. Still, I can’t go on my own. The Foxes are the least likely to cause me trouble, and the most disposable ones.”

“I should tell that one to Wymack. I’m sure he’d be flattered.”

Neil studied Andrew’s face, but it was as carefully blank as always, as it had stayed throughout their conversation. 

Then Andrew sheathed his knife. “I won’t tell you when we plan to leave. When is Ichirou expecting you to go to the Chthonios?”

“That depends on how long it takes for the border to be secure and the area safe, and also how much Ichirou wants me to be trained before I go. It could be a year after I pass the exam, maybe more.”

“You never planned on escaping.” 

“No.”

“Were you planning on serving the Empire? Maybe rise through the ranks until you could usurp the Emperor?”

“I was planning to kill him with the Cornershard.”

Andrew didn’t move at all, but the change in his eyes was sharp. 

“I’m planning to make a deal with the Mad God whose corpse lies at the bottom of the Chthonios, and have it kill the Moriyamas.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows just a fraction. “I thought Kevin was the most dramatic person to ever exist, but I see I was wrong. Are you suicidal? Because I’m pretty sure the combination of ‘deal’ with ‘Mad God’ can’t end well for anyone involved.”

“What’s one more deal with a demon?”

“I have been called a lot of things, but demon is a first.”

“Are you flattered?”

“Shut up.”

Andrew turned to the rail overlooking the ground floor. He signaled the Foxes downstairs, and one by one they all came back. Everything came back to Neil, all at once. The smells of people and food and spilled ale, the noise of loud conversations, laughter and songs, the chaos of bustling bodies, of musicians and dancers and servers. The Foxes didn’t ask anything about Neil and Andrew’s chat. Kevin all but crashed down into a chair next to Andrew, folded his arms over the table and buried his head into them. Aaron sat as sullen as ever, looking disappointed in finding Neil still there. Everybody else tried their best to forget about everything and have fun, and rope Neil in. 

Neil was anxious and uncomfortable and worried sick about what Andrew was thinking, what he might decide to do. It was still the most fun he had in years.

  
  


Going back was one of the hardest things he ever had to do. Allison helped him to brush his hair until there was no trace it had been coiled. His clothes had been carefully folded into some paper; when he put them back on, they didn’t smell like Abby’s house, or the Foxes, at all. Only Matt and Dan accompanied him this time. When they reached the corridor Andrew had cut into existence, Dan almost hugged him. She caught herself just in time.

“It’s okay, Dan,” Neil whispered. “I’m fine.”

“Go before I kidnap you,” Dan said, eyes shining.

He moved the grate as silently as he could, and put it back in place just as carefully. His room was deathly silent as always, not one guard in sight. He removed his slippers and almost ran to the bathroom. He took a bath and used the lotion Allison had given him, until no trace of where he had been and who he had seen was left on his skin. Then he dressed and rolled around in the covers of his bed, until he smelled of Riko again.

_ How ironic _ , he thought, burying his head underneath the pillow. It was the first time he actually did his best to smell like Riko. If Riko could see him then, he’d go crazy. Maybe even start drooling a bit.

Neil covered his mouth with both hands, trying to suffocate a hysterical laugh. 

_ A year, maybe more _ .

If everything went according to plan, the Foxes would be dead within a month of his entrance exam.

He remembered Dan’s eyes blinking too many times; Renee’s kind smiles; Matt soothing him with infinite care; Allison’s abrasive way of showing she cared; Nicky trying to teach him a complicated drinking game. 

Andrew offering him an alternative, a way out; Andrew weighting his lies and his half-truths and deciding to trust him enough to tell him.

Then he remembered Ichirou, and that day Nathaniel had been granted a hearing.

Nathaniel wanted to scream into the pillow, but didn’t dare. If only Ichirou had ignored him, if only he had left him to rot in the cloistered wing.

  
  


_ It was a private hearing, held in the residential wing, away from the court. Nathaniel was escorted to it by way too many guards, but seeing as Riko was nowhere in sight, he wasn’t going to complain. _

_ Yet even there, everything was a ceremony. From the number of guards to how many steps they took, everything followed a complex script. Nathaniel knew better than to relax when he was admitted into Ichirou’s presence, even though the Emperor had discarded his court clothes for a simple black kimono, even though he was kneeling at a table and writing - no advisors or courtiers, no gilded throne in sight.  _

_ Nathaniel prostrated himself and didn’t raise his forehead from the ground. He could hear the faint scrape of the pen on the paper.  _

_ After a long time, Ichirou gave him permission to rise. Nathaniel sat on his haunches, and met his eyes - cold and black, a frozen arctic sea under a starless night. Nathaniel clinged to what his mother had tried to instill in him - the peculiar kind of pride she shrouded herself in, the pride of the Sideracoronata who were touched by a god and reigned as divine beings. She would have looked Ichirou straight in the eye, and would have not wavered.  _

_ Nathaniel did, oh so very much, but knew he couldn’t afford to show it. _

_ “You made quite the bold claim in your audience request, Prince Wesninski,” Ichirou finally said. “If you lied, you won’t leave this room alive.” _

_ Nathaniel’s mouth and throat felt like parched paper when he spoke. “I wasn’t. I can find a new Cornershard for you. If you let me enter the Academy and become a Knight, I will give it you.” _

_ “I will be merciful and ignore how disrespectful it is of you to presume you can bargain with me,” Ichirou said. _

_ Nathaniel stayed perfectly still, and didn’t lower his eyes. “My apologies, Your Majesty, but certainly you realize what delving into the Chthonios involves.” _

_ Ichirou studied him for a while. “I see. To delve into the Chthonios, you’d need men. The only men who would follow and omega are the soldiers of the Day regiment. And once you’re back, you expect to be hailed as the new champion of the Empire, with a title and a place in the Knights. Not just Riko’s breeding bitch.” _

_ Nathaniel didn’t acknowledge the jab. They both knew he was useless even for that. _

_ “Somehow I can’t see you taking orders from Riko, once you’re a Knight,” Ichirou added. _

_ “Neither can I. But who would be more useful to you? A single warrior, or an army with new shard weapons? An army that could protect your heir much better than Riko.” _

_ Ichirou’s wife had just announced to the country that she was pregnant. Riko was smart enough to not comment on that even with Nathaniel - but anyone who knew him, anyone who knew how unhinged and egotistical he was, could see the danger he posed to the child. Riko was never going to be Emperor - a fact he had never made peace with - and was always pathetically desperate for Ichirou’s recognition. With a heir coming, he knew where Ichirou’s attention would shift to. There was even the distinct possibility that Nathaniel would be given to the infant - a much better solution than giving him to the second son. When he had heard such speculations on the radio, Riko had flown into a rage. He had broken three of Nathaniel’s ribs with that beating.  _

_ “You have lived in this Palace for two years,” Ichirou said, studying him. “If you didn’t bring this up before, the least I can do is assume you’re lying.” _

_ “I wasn’t sure I could do it.” _

_ “And now you are?” _

_ “Now it’s a matter of survival. The Old One has been whispering to me for years, but its voice is getting louder and louder. If I don’t meet it, if I don’t face it, it will destroy me.” _

_ Nathaniel didn’t bother pointing out that if Riko stopped raping him, he’d have his powers to protect him, that he could shield himself from Zagreus’ influence somewhat. He knew that was of no consequence to anyone, let alone Ichirou. _

_ Ichirou seemed to consider this. “The Duke was always adamant that the Cornershard would die with him. I admit, I thought he was lying to protect himself. I also thought that we could find another one in the Chthonios, just as he did. But we were always missing a piece, weren’t we? Your father didn’t suddenly realize where it was. He went once he married your mother.” _

_ “Yes. The Chthonios has always been cursed. Her powers protected him from the Old One’s voice.” _

_ “But your mother wasn’t there with him. So tell me, Siderai, why shouldn’t I let my Knights fuck that power out of you, like your father did with the Sacred Queen, and send them to retrieve a Cornershard?” Ichirou asked. His face was perfectly impassive, like he was talking about something trivial and inconsequential. _

_ Cold descended over Nathaniel then. He conjured in his mind all his mother’s glacial shrewdness, all his father’s savage bloodthirst, and prayed he had even a fraction of both. “You could do that. But would that be enough? Would your Knights know what awaits down there, and would they be able to face it? There’s no one else left who knows the Old One, other than me, and I know what it whispers. Plus, I will do something you’ve always wanted to do.” _

_ Ichirou smiled then. He knew what Nathaniel meant. “Is that why you ask for the Foxes? They would be the only ones to accept you in their ranks. They would be ecstatic about it, even. But I remember what happened to the men your father went down the Well with. Only he came back.” _

_ “The God requires a sacrifice,”  Prince Nathaniel Wesninski, son of The Butcher, said. “I will kill the Foxes for you.”   _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, you have no idea how long I've waited to write that final wham line. I'm so happy. Are you? No?  
> Cookie points to anyone who can point out the cultured references I've done (hint: one is an Italian poet, the other is a Ghibli movie).


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry, forgot to mention: TW for suicidal ideation/suicidal thoughts

Nathaniel's rooms were in chaos. The table and chairs had been toppled. Broken glasses and pitchers laid, shattered, on the floor. The radio, Nathaniel's most prized possession, had been flung against a wall, and was now an explosion of bits and pieces of wood and metal on the tiles.

Kevin looked about, searching for Nathaniel crumpled in a corner. When this happened, both Nathaniel and Riko became a nightmare to deal with. Nathaniel let loose all his stubbornness and resentment; no tongue was more barbed than his when he really wanted to hurt. It just made treating his injuries that much worse.

Riko became... just more Riko. Nothing riled him up more than Nathaniel fighting back. It charged him with a gleeful sort of energy. He was like a child romping through other children's castle blocks.

The door to the bathroom was closed. Kevin knocked lightly on it, listening. He didn't call; there was no need. He waited, even though he knew the door was unlocked. There was the faint noise of water running, then a drawn-out hiss.

"Nathaniel, let me help," Kevin called.

"Why do you even ask? You'll enter anyway no matter what I say," Nathaniel said through gritted teeth.

Kevin sighed, and opened the door. Nathaniel was sitting against the vanity. He was stitching a gash in his right side, agonizingly slowly. Kevin took in the extent of the damage - bleeding cuts on his arms, another one on his neck, bruises. Nathaniel’s hand shook as he worked the needle; one of his fingers was crooked. Kevin went to him, washed his hands, and then crouched down, slowly. He folded both his own hands over Nathaniel’s shaking one, and gently pried the needle from his grasp. Kevin knew better than saying anything when Nathaniel didn’t protest; he stayed silent and waited as Nathaniel found a comfortable position. Then he started to stitch. He ignored Nathaniel’s hisses of pain, the way his body clenched and unclenched as he fought not to pull away.

It wasn’t that hard; Kevin had practice.

Kevin repeated that thought in his head over and over again to steady his hand.  

“He broke the radio,” Nathaniel said, and couldn't quite hide the thickness in his voice.

Kevin picked up the scissors from Nathaniel’s first aid kit. “I'll buy you a new one.”

“He'll just break that one too. Especially because you bought it.”

“Then I'll buy you another one. I'll buy you one everyday if I have to,” Kevin said, knotting the thread.

“Did you really want to leave without me?”

The scissors clattered on the floor. Kevin looked frantically about, his heart suddenly hammering a mile a minute. He wanted to ask _Are you crazy?_ , but Nathaniel looked, for once, so vulnerable – so hurt, a poppy sagging and withering, waiting for the plough to cut it down.

There was nothing Kevin could say – of the late Duke, of the Sacred Queen, of what kind of people they were – so he said instead, “I couldn’t risk you telling Riko.”

Nathaniel tried to punch him, but they were too close, and Kevin managed to throw up his hands just in time. Kevin still landed on the floor. “What the hell, I could have hurt you!”

“‘Telling Riko’, Kevin? Is that who you think I am?” Nathaniel asked. He so would have liked to scream it in his face, damn each and every one of the wing’s guards. “Do you think I’m his broken-in toy, ready to scuttle to him and tell him everything I hear?”

“That’s not---”

“If you can’t trust me after- after everything, then how can you trust the Foxes, who have no idea what it’s like, living here? How can you trust Andrew? Why did he come up with the idea? Oh, it was his idea, there’s no doubt about it. No way you even allowed yourself to think about escaping before he planted the idea in your head. How long have you been living under Riko’s thumb, Kevin? Ten years? Who’s the broken-in toy?”

 _Eleven_ , Kevin mind’s supplied. He hated when Nathaniel was like this, he hated his sharp tongue and he hated the urge to hurt him that boiled into his own veins.

He hated that Nathaniel was right.

He just wished things were different. If things were different, what kind of people could they be? Would they be able to let the armor and thorns crumble to ash into the wind? Was there anything left underneath, or had their masks seeped too deep into their skin?

“Will you come with us?” Kevin asked.

_Us._

_The Foxes._

_Andrew_.

Nathaniel didn’t want to think about them. He didn’t want to think about their smiles and their fights and their hands patting his back. He didn’t want to think about Andrew’s promises and his unflinching eyes and his uncaring, unimpressed attitude towards the Moriyamas, the Empire, the gods themselves. It was a dream as feeble as the flame of a single candle in the dark. Nathaniel was going to blow it out himself, and only smoke would remain, smoke and ash and the ruins of an Empire that would descend into chaos for who knows how long. The Empire had only one law for ascension - the strongest one would kill their way to the throne. Every lord who thought they had a chance, or the right, would fight to the death - and it would be all thanks to Nathaniel.

He would enjoy that show.

That’s what he repeated in his own head every time guilt twisted in his stomach, shredding him from the inside.

“When are you leaving?” Nathaniel asked.

“At the end of the next summer. The Free Marches delegation just left and won’t be back until the trade-winds change again.”

Something like a silent sob tore itself out of Nathaniel’s throat. “That’s too long. It’s too long, it could be any day now, I can’t---”

 _I can’t just wait and hope for the best. The best never happens. What will happen is that my heat will come, it will, and what then? I have to kill them. I can’t just run, I have to kill them both, because they will never stop looking for me if I don’t. Especially if Riko--- if_ **_Riko_ ** _\---_

“But that’s what your plan is for, right? Leverage. We’ll go to the Chthonios as soon as you enter the academy - you obviously will enter, you have more talent than half of the useless rich kids in there combined. This way, even if… that comes… you’ll have Ichirou on your side.”

Nathaniel stared at him, then. _Ichirou on his side_? That wasn’t the point. Riko would be dead in that scenario. Didn’t Kevin realize that? Or was he lying to himself?

Nathaniel looked away, and didn’t ask. Then a bitter smile stretched his lips. Who was the coward now?

It wouldn’t matter in the end.  

“You wouldn’t lie to Ichirou - nobody in their right mind would--- You can really give him another Cornershard, right?” Kevin said, his hands fluttering, panic-riddled hares bolting in a wide-open field.

Nathaniel wanted to laugh at Kevin’s frazzled nerves. Even when plotting defection, Kevin couldn’t help himself.

“Yes,” he said instead.

_But I won’t._

“Then--- then let’s do this. Come with us. Give the Cornershard to Jeremy.”

“What about later? What about when the Empire declares war on the Free Marches? What about when my mother declares war too? Will you fight in that war?”

“The idea was--- it used to be, faking my death. Letting the Moriyamas think I died in an airlugger accident, let them find a charred body. We can find a way---”

“Riko won’t be tricked by that. You know him, Kevin. He acts like he despises you, but he’s obsessive about everything he owns, and we’re objects to him. If you were to die, he would ask the demon of the shard to confirm it. And once he knows you’re not, he would do anything to bring you back.”

Kevin’s face fell. “Is that a no?” he asked, in a very small voice.

Nathaniel had experienced a lot of painful things, but Kevin, in that single moment, was the worst stab he had ever endured.

There he was, Kevin and his liquid spine, defying the diminished, enslaved fate decided for him by the Moriyamas for the first time in his life, and trying so hard to save Nathaniel too. Despairing that Nathaniel seemed to reject that, when the only sensible choice would be to kill him and preserve his own plans.

He had no idea.

And it destroyed Nathaniel in a way he hadn’t thought possible. Kevin was never supposed to be a Fox. He was supposed to be safe, where Riko wanted him.

“I want to go. I want to,” Nathaniel told him.

And it wasn’t a lie.

 

Andrew had a habit when they trained. His habit was that he didn’t have tells. Nathaniel hated him a bit for it.

Nathaniel’s arms felt like lead, and his every movement was becoming slower and slower. By this point, with any other Fox, he’d resort to feints and tricks - but Andrew seemed infuriatingly immune to all of them. It was like he knew them all already. Normally, Nathaniel didn’t care that much. It could be frustrating, but Andrew had the uncanny ability to make everything so easy. He didn’t mock, he didn’t taunt, he didn’t comment at all - he just allowed Nathaniel to train until he didn’t want to anymore. Even when Nathaniel felt the need to obliterate himself into the physical pain of complete exhaustion, Andrew kept the same bored expression. He didn’t expect anything.

When Nathaniel really just wanted to score one point, though, it became quite frustrating. Amazing and inspiring, but also frustrating.

Nathaniel decided to play his last resort card. “Kevin told me when you plan to escape.”

Saying that word there, on the Academy grounds, was enough to make cold dread surge within him and fill his lungs, and he hoped Andrew---

Nathaniel lunged. Andrew parried, side-stepped, and tripped him.

“Kevin is an idiot,” he said, looking perfectly unruffled. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

 _It doesn’t matter_ , echoed in the empty wasteland of Nathaniel’s mind.

 _It doesn’t matter_. Riko’s sneer. Mouth filled with sharp glinting teeth, with the promise of a claiming bite, a curse Nathaniel wasn’t going to survive.

 _It doesn’t matter_. Ichirou’s death-cold eyes. An Empire at his feet. A fist crushing hopes, plans, lives like brittle, frozen leaves.

 _It doesn’t matter_ . His mother slapping him and shaking him when he presented. His mother hugging him before they attempted their escape. _Promise me, Abram._

 _It doesn’t matter_. The Foxes, harsh and warm. Stepping out from a dark room into not sunlight, but a distant dawn, just dusting the horizon, still cold but filled with promises.

Andrew.

 _Promise me, Abram_.

If only he could _show her_ , if only he could _make it right_ , if only he could kill the Moriyamas, then maybe, just maybe, she would have him back. Maybe she wouldn’t kill him. Maybe he would be free, maybe---

A ripple formed into his mind, expanding fast, lightning searing a livid horizon, and then boomed the thunder; incoherent, inhuman, undeniable. The voice-thought reverberated like sound trapped inside the giant bells of a cathedral, rattling Nathaniel’s bones. It didn’t have words. It didn’t have visions.

A god doesn’t need to do, say, act. It is a verb, it is a power. It bends reality by simply existing.

And the god at the bottom of the Chthonios _was_ , and it knew Nathaniel, it knew the taint of his blood and the sound of every breath Nathaniel would ever take and how long would it be before it knew every hidden, dark crevice of his mind too, how long before---

Andrew put a hand on the back of Nathaniel’s neck and pushed him to his knees. Nathaniel went down hard, collapsing like a punctured zeppelin, his shard-sword clanging to the ground. His lungs were caving in. He ground his teeth until they were reduced to dust and shavings, it felt like.    

“Stop that,” Andrew said.

Nathaniel wanted to curse at him, but he had no breath left to do it.

Andrew put a hand on the back of Nathaniel’s neck and pushed him to his knees. Nathaniel went down hard, collapsing like a punctured zeppelin, his shard-sword clanging to the ground. He clawed at the grass and the soil, still hard with early morning frost. His lungs were caving in. He ground his teeth until they were reduced to dust and shavings, it felt like. Nathaniel covered his ears, even though he knew it was useless. Tears stung his eyes and choked his throat, and he felt so _pathetic_ , and then it changed into rage bubbling up until it was boiling his blood. He wanted to be angry, not a sobbing, pathetic mess. A sobbing, pathetic, useless, powerless omega.

Andrew's hand on his neck never left. It was hard not to resent the warmth it gave, the comfort. Andrew was closer than he usually dared. So close Nathaniel could smell him, a thing he knew better than to do. He wanted to be repulsed by the distinct bitterness of Andrew's alpha scent. Nathaniel wanted so many things.

He stayed on the ground, his mind split in two. A part of it drowned and fought the viscous slush of his own thoughts to stay afloat, every movement tangling him deeper. Another part was laughing in bitter self-reproach. How pathetic. How predictable. Of course an alpha scent was what he needed to calm down. Reason didn't matter. Riko, and all he had done that should have made him repulsed by alphas, didn't matter. What was the point of struggling so hard, if his biology fought against him every step of the way?

Nathaniel wanted to laugh.

Andrew squeezed his nape harder. Nathaniel looked up, and realized he had laughed out loud. Andrew was staring at him. The intensity startled him from his state enough that he found the breath the speak.

"You look scared," Nathaniel said.

"You just sounded like a madman," Andrew said, that faint concern wiped from his brow like thin smoke in the breeze.

Nathaniel laughed again, but lowly this time, the self-reproach seeping in, making the sound darker. "Not like any other hysterical omega? We're frail beings."

"That was a panic attack, not a hysterical one."

He said it so matter-of-factly. Somehow it calmed Nathaniel down. He noticed how Andrew didn't deny the frail omega thing, and tried to shy away, but Andrew put his other hand on his neck too. He was almost close enough for their foreheads to touch, but the space of a hair’s breadth remained between them. Nathaniel looked up, even though he didn't want to. He didn't want to see the possessiveness, that superior look alphas had when they thought they were doing an omega a favor. Gracing them with their protection. But what he saw was always the same. Impassiveness.

"I'm not going to console you and tell you you're not frail."

"Wow, thank you," Nathaniel said with all the sarcasm he could muster.

Andrew almost rolled his eyes, but caught himself before Nathaniel could notice. That smartmouth. "Listen."

That got Nathaniel's attention. His breaths were still laboured, and he was coiled tight enough to break, but Andrew had his attention, and that was what counted. He flexed a little his fingers, crossed against Nathaniel's nape, tangled with his silky hair. Staying still and not diving in, not burying his nose into those curls and the enticing curve of his shoulder and neck, not pressing their cheeks together until his scent was all over Nathaniel, required a monumental effort. Nathaniel seemed oblivious to the effect he had, which was unusual for an omega, and frustrating for Andrew. He also seemed unaffected to what an alpha's nearness should do, which was perfectly fine. It made control easier, like a freezing cold shower. It sharpened Andrew' self-control. A part of him wanted to laugh, too. He had never wanted to feel this for an omega. The implications were enough to twist his stomach in self-disgust.

"I'm not going to tell you you're strong and capable or any of that inspirational shit," Andrew started, "because I know it's lies and you know it too. That's something my therapist would say."

"You have a therapist?"

"Yes. Bee."

Since he wasn't adding anything else, Nathaniel prodded him. Or he tried to; what came out was more akin to a croak, but Andrew understood anyway.

"You are frail. That's what happens when life beats you down until it breaks you. It doesn't matter that you're an omega. Any average alpha dealing with half the things you've dealt with would have broken much faster."

 _I’m not broken yet_ , Nathaniel thought. He looked Andrew in the eye, scowling fiercely, trying to stab what he meant into him. _Not until my heat doesn’t come. Not until Riko doesn’t break my mind. Not until the plan_...

A new wave of panic and overwhelming guilt washed over him and pushed him down into the abyss, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Saliva pooled into his mouth as his stomach roiled and he dry-heaved. He had tried to lie to himself and to delay the inevitable moment when he had to face the truth, and this was where that effort landed him; curled in a panicking, pathetic ball on the dusty floor.

He had let himself grow too attached to the Foxes, and now he was fucked.

The sheer irony of that thought - the chilling and revolting truth of it - tore him to shreds. Andrew never left his side, never moved his hands. He waited.

A cold breeze was washing over them from the open windows. It was raining outside, hard, so they had moved their training session in the hangar, where the Foxes' airluggers rested. They had been sparring in the armory, low-ceilinged and secluded. Kevin had disappeared with Wymack a while ago. The only sound was the rain singing, and Nathaniel’s labored breaths.

“You’re not very good at this motivational speech thing,” Nathaniel finally said, because he needed to move the conversation to safer ground, and sarcasm usually did the trick.

“What is it that set it off?” Andrew asked, implacable. “Are you afraid that Riko will stop us? Or is your other plan not going to work, now that we’re in the equation?”

Nathaniel froze. In any other moment, he would have been more careful, controlled himself better. But what he felt was relief - the relief of letting himself go and only feeling the wind whipping at his clothes - and so he just - wasn’t. He let himself go. He was too tired.

“No need to be surprised,” Andrew said. “You’re exactly the kind of idiot who would plan to escape on his own.”

“I’m not. Surprised, I mean.”

“Nobody asked for a martyr.”

With all defenses down and crumbled, Nathaniel couldn’t help it; he laughed. Hoarse and desperate, he laughed, and then wheezed when it left him with no air to spare. He sucked in a handful of painful breaths, and shook his head.

He wanted to tell him.

He couldn’t imagine doing it.

The memory of his mother’s face was lightning-bright in his mind, gone just as quickly. The afterimage of her pinched, disapproving face danced on the back of his eyelids. She would’ve killed him just for considering being this stupid.

“Look who’s talking,” he choked out instead.

Andrew’s eyes narrowed. He knew this tactic well - Nathaniel used it all the time with the Foxes, who fed off each other’s volatility. “A martyr sacrifices himself for nothing. I grant something in exchange for something else.”

“Why? What do you want?”

“I want nothing.”

Nathaniel snorted. He still felt nauseous, but at least his breath was stabilizing enough that long sentences didn’t feel like insurmountable challenges. “Why do you even try, then? What’s the point?”

“Passing the time until it ends.”

Nathaniel’s face contorted in shock and then in pain, but he never averted his eyes. “Is it safe?” he asked. “To stop wanting to live?”

Andrew’s palms were searing on Nathaniel’s skin, the point of contact of two burning stars, falling into each other until the only choice left was annihilation.

“I am not encouraging you to kill yourself. I’m encouraging you to give me your back.”

“Why are you telling me this? You don’t trust me,” Nathaniel said. _And you’re absolutely right_ , he almost, almost said. All the words he couldn’t say bubbled underneath his skin, crawling all over with shredding teeth and revolting legs. Spirits, he was _exhausted_.

“Because you’re being _stupid_ ,” Andrew said, and for the first time there was something in his inflection, in how he very slightly spat out that last word. “You had found your own way out, you still had the strength to, and look at yourself now. Floundering because people care about you, and you don’t know what to do with yourself. You’re letting yourself be pulled by too many different air currents. I am telling you: pick one. Pick my plan.”

Nathaniel let out a disbelieving sound. “Did you just use an airlugger metaphor with me?”

“Seems like the best thing to do with a junkie like you. Should I promise you a shiny airlugger of your own as an incentive?”

Nathaniel shook his head. If he was honest with himself, he already--- but no. No, he would not just yield like this, to someone who was clearly making him dance on the palm of his hand. It didn’t matter to him that his motives might be better than Riko’s or Ichirou’s. He just wouldn’t let himself be had without a fight, without paying Andrew in the same coin he used: words like blades and scars poked until they bled. “What do you get in return for all of this? Power? Do you feel less like a powerless orphan when you’re pulling everyone’s strings like this?”

Andrew _felt_ , then. That fire he had, that tongue always ready to lash out - Andrew’s hands were still laced over Nathaniel’s neck, and Andrew just wanted to bury his fingers in that auburn hair, to fist it and pull Nathaniel’s back until his pale neck was exposed and his lips fell open, wet and red and hotter than the fires of Hell, and just as damning, and _then_ \---

Andrew needed to think about something else, fast. It was futile - it was too late and the image would be neatly added to the catalogue tormenting him every night - but for now, he had to think of something unpleasant. “Jealous?”

Nathaniel snarled, and pushed Andrew’s arms away. Andrew ignored the twinge of loss that that caused. The level to which every little stupid thing Nathaniel did or said affected him was grating, embarrassing and undignified, but he wasn’t delusional enough to tell himself it didn’t happen.

“I won’t tell you, ‘I’ll do what I can to keep what little I have’” Andrew added. “There’s no point; everyone fails you sooner or later. Sunrise, death, the inevitability of failure: these are the only truths. We all just pass the time in between them; I’m just smart enough to know it.”

_React._

_Show me that fire runs deep enough, show me that you haven’t hit rock bottom yet. Show me you still have what it takes to survive, show me that fire means something, give me---_

_Give me_ **_something_ ** _._

The only thing stronger than the self-loathing he was feeling for _feeling_ , was the desperate need for Nathaniel to say _yes_.  

Andrew knew perfectly well he was a hypocrite. He wouldn’t deny it if asked. He was pretty sure Nathaniel could see it, too.

He always did.

“For someone who claims to not want anything, you sure spend a lot of effort into keeping people on a leash,” Nathaniel said. “How much have you sacrificed for Aaron? And what about Kevin? You’re keeping your end of the bargain with him for Aaron, to give him a shot at being an engineer. Again. What did Kevin even promise to keep you entertained?” Nathaniel asked. Ice creeped up his throat when he said that word, _entertained_ ; such a callous euphemism. The idea of _Andrew just passing the time as he waited to die_ was way too close to the idea of _Andrew finding out it was not worth it_. Nathaniel wasn’t surprised, truly. Andrew was a man who had hit rock bottom and broke, that he understood well. It was still much more chilling than he would have imagined. Andrew’s entire ethos was based on not caring, not feeling, not wanting. Self-annihilation as defense mechanism. Yet he wanted to help Nathaniel with maybe not making an idiotic decision and ending up dead.

“Kevin thinks he can interest me in a career in airlugger races,” Andrew said.

Nathaniel was, for a moment, at a complete loss for words. “You’re kidding.”

“He’s stupid.”

“What? No, that would be amazing!”

Andrew stared him down. “You’re as obsessed as him. I should have known.”

“You… don’t want that?” Nathaniel asked then, hesitating.

“You seem hard of hearing. Or maybe it’s a problem with short-term memory? I want nothing. It’s mildly entertaining, to watch Kevin trying so hard to make me interested. His frustration amuses me. But no. I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not interested.”

“All this time passed giving Aaron what he wants, giving Kevin what he wants, and for what? How much have you sacrificed for them?”

“Nothing.”

“Because you want nothing?”

“He catches on at last.”

Nathaniel looks at the floor. “You spend so much energy protecting them. Now you want to protect me, too. Why? I can’t give you anything.”

“You’ll be useful once we’re in the Free Marches.”

“I’ll be useful to Kevin and the Foxes and Knox. What about you? What can I give _you_?”

The _things_ that came out of that oblivious mouth. Andrew could read it in his entire posture, in his clear eyes; he didn’t think for a second that Andrew might be like - like _them_.

That little tealight at the center of the dark room of his mind burned a little brighter. He could almost feel a little warmth from it - and then he felt like smashing it to the ground.

Hope was a disturbing, disquieting thing. Something he didn’t want, or deserve.

“A kiss,” Andrew said. His voice was perfectly flat. He rarely ever changed it, even in his own head. He had stopped screaming a long time ago. What he heard were echoes of voices - his own voice, the voices of those who had hurt him, the voices of those who had seen him and deemed him unimportant and not worth the effort - like distant thunder that rumbled, _Flinch. Look at me in horror. Realize what you have done. Show me how disgusting I am_.

"...Oh," Nathaniel said.

Andrew wasn't disappointed at Nathaniel's reaction. It was better if he didn't want it, anyway. Safer. He needed to know for sure, though. "'Oh'?"

But Nathaniel didn't look scared, or disgusted. He looked like someone who had been looking for his spectacles for hours, until someone pointed out he had had them on his head all the while. "You like me."

Andrew mustered all his self-control to avoid looking to the heavens. "I don't like you. I hate you."

It sounded juvenile even to his own ears. Nathaniel's small laugh confirmed it, and sent a small, stray spark of something golden down Andrew's spine. The realization left him wordless and ice-cold. Nathaniel felt the shift, and studied his face. Still, he didn't look worried, or frightened. He should have. It would have made things easier. This open curiosity made Andrew's life all the more difficult. Andrew looked at him; he couldn't help it. The scent of him was everywhere, so overwhelming it seeped into Andrew's pores. It wasn't strong; it was delicate and sweet, like ripe fruit, but the faintest note of it was enough to set every nerve in Andrew's body on edge, every muscle turning to stone in the effort to not be affected, to deny, to control. He was powerless all the same, and he hated it. Hated Nathaniel for making him feel like this. Hated how his scent made him want to bury himself underneath Nathaniel's warm skin, how this desire burned away, curled and blackened like a flame eating paper, until it became, just as quickly, the physical, all too-real desire to possess Nathaniel's flesh, to bury himself inside him to the hilt and feel that warmth, completely, absolutely.

Andrew hated himself for it much more than he could ever hate Nathaniel.

He anchored himself by focusing on his eyes. Eyes so bright, like a cloudless arctic sky, Andrew was made blind, arms outstretched in the glare and fingers clasping at empty air.

"But I can't," Andrew finally said.

Nathaniel understood immediately. He looked ferociously disappointed for a moment, and then it was gone in that hopeless despair Andrew recognized so well, and couldn’t bear to see in him. "Oh."

"If I had known this was the way to finally stop you from talking smack, I would've mentioned it sooner."

"Ass," Nathaniel said without heat. A small smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

"But once we're away..."

Nathaniel looked up. "Are you promising me to ravish me once we're away from Riko's grasp?"

Andrew scowled. "I'm not doing anything of the sort unless you ask me to. And I won't let you make this anything you don't really want, if that's who you are. I won't be like them. I won't let you let me be."

Nathaniel's eyes fell, then, for the first time, to Andrew's lips. Andrew's hands twitched. The need to feel his skin under his fingers again was like pins and needles flying up his arms.

"Once we're far away," Andrew repeated.

"Is that a promise?" Nathaniel asked, so close Andrew could feel the last curls of warmth in his breath. His hands fluttered between them, wanting to touch but not daring; butterflies floating close to a screen, barely grazing it, gone again. Nathaniel knew already that he had to scrub his hair and neck as thoroughly as he could before he saw Riko. Any lingering scent could be justified with the contact of training; but kissing was notoriously hard to mask. And he couldn’t justify using mouthwash; that would be a dead giveaway.

He had never desired kissing someone before; never even contemplated it. But now he wondered…

He was half-surprised he didn’t hate the idea, but it was a short-lived thought. Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t thinking about _kissing_ ; he was thinking about _kissing Andrew_.

"It is a promise," Andrew said, not leaning in.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter than the others, I know. Hope y'all are ready for chapter 5 because that's when the fireworks really start. And by fireworks I mean you'll suffer. I can't wait :D  
> Edited to add: there used to be a link to the WIP version of chapter 5 here, but I'm almost done so I removed it :D


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: suicide mention/ideation, lots of violence, implied rape, Riko.

Andrew had a complicated relationship with feeling. Most days, he despised feeling anything; it was an inconvenience he had no use for. Some other days, he needed to stand somewhere high enough to shake himself into feeling anything at all. Vertigo was close enough to the desire of falling, of letting himself go, to ease him. He didn't calm down, exactly. He didn't have any high to come down from; only an empty black hole to retire to again. But it was a sort of consolation, and a reminder.

He could end it anytime he wanted.

He was going to stay to spite everyone who had made him feel like this.

He had killed a fair number of them, anyway. It would be a waste of effort to just kill himself now.

No matter how unpleasant, Andrew couldn't lie to himself. He had always been too in touch with his own self for his own good.

Today was Nathaniel's field exam day, and Andrew was tense.

The theory exam had been the week before. Nathaniel had passed with flying colors – not that anyone was anxious about it other than the smartmouth himself. Nathaniel had then passed the following week stressing out. If he was to take a guess, Andrew would think Nathaniel had infected him. Nathaniel had made it clear that he did not want to discuss the upcoming field exam. With anyone. He had even turned his scathing tongue on Matt – arguably the only Fox who had a pass to be kind with him and not get a blank stare in return – and then had passed the following hours sulking and miserable, unable to just spit it out and say sorry. Andrew understood, and accepted how Nathaniel latched onto him and his indifferent silence. All things considered, Nathaniel at his highest point of stress was still much more bearable than Aaron, so Andrew really didn't have anything to complain about. Nathaniel didn't ask for sympathy or to talk things out. He just wanted company, possibly silent, and possibly not stressing like he was. Andrew had thought he could provide that.

Yet today was different. Nathaniel was out of his sight, in the most dangerous place he could imagine for him right now. Nobody had dared to voice that doubt, not even Kevin who was prone to word vomit when he was terrified – which was most of the time – but all the Foxes knew it.

Riko.

Months of training came down to this day. Andrew knew Nathaniel was ready. The problems laid elsewhere – and there wasn't much Nathaniel could do about it, no matter how cunning and ruthless he was.

Andrew flexed his fingers, curled them into a fist. What could he do, if it came down to it?

If it came down to it, he would keep his promise.

There was a dark sort of amusement tangled with the thought, mocking his own worry. Who would have thought it would be like this, when he had first laid his eyes on Nathaniel? There were so many things he was made to think about now - mostly unpleasant.

He couldn't lay his eyes on Nathaniel without  _ feeling _ . Desire used to be safer. It was physical, inevitable, biological; something he could frame as separate from himself. It wasn't safe to desire Nathaniel. He was an omega. There would come a time when he would not be able to give true consent, and what would that make of Andrew? And Andrew was an alpha. Most people would think they were a perfect match. It made him want to throw up. It didn't take having grown up surrounded by cruel, exploitative people, like he did, to know the worst of what people said about it. Even high-class people did it. He had heard them enough times. An alpha having sex with an omega in heat was painted as being the wildest, most animalistic sexual experience possible. Omegas were kind of rare, and mating with one was considered an achievement - and it wasn’t uncommon for an alpha to never get the chance in their life. Omegas, on the other hand, were universally defined by it, and not in a kind way. Andrew had seen it for himself; Aaron couldn't go anywhere without people turning, whispering behind his back, wondering when he would go into heat, how that should prevent him from holding a job. Or worse, wondering how the heat was for him; how his attitude would melt away, how he would beg for it, how he was nothing more than a breeding bitch, deep down, like all omegas. Everyone turned into experts in what nature or biology wanted when it came to omegas. Andrew used to be mildly annoyed by it, and mostly annoyed by Aaron's inability to deal with it. Aaron resented their difference, hated that they were twins, and yet he had the shorter end of the stick – in his eyes. Aaron had no idea what Andrew had endured to keep him safe, after Tilda died, and Andrew was fine with it.

He could see the irony in his predicament, though. The irony didn't temper the rage and the self-loathing. What would they say, all those bastards who had raped him, seeing him now?

_ See, we're not so different after all? _

Andrew had to remind himself that he hadn't done anything yet. That he wasn't attracted to Nathaniel because he was an omega – or at least, he hoped biology had nothing to do with it. That this feeling – this desire – was tangled with other things. Embarrassing things, granted. Like the way Andrew noticed how Nathaniel's expression opened when he smiled, with that tiny, secretive grin dancing on his lips. He didn't really laugh. The first time Andrew found himself wondering how that would look and sound, he knew he was done for.

Even if everything went smoothly, he doubted he’d get the chance to see Nathaniel laugh very soon. The thought kindled something in Andrew that he had thought long gone; but it was also something he knew wouldn't glow any brighter. Ashes and faint, weak embers were everything he had left to offer. Nathaniel seemed fine with it. He was fighting so hard. If it had been anyone else, Andrew would have found it amusing, to watch him fail. Like Andrew had. It would have been a comforting outcome. And instead, Andrew found himself worried--- no,  _ scared _ of what would happen today. The exam consisted in a mock battle, with candidates assigned to a team of Academy students. One could access the theoretical exam only if they had a team vouching for them. The only way to have a team vouching for them was to have connections. It was an effective way to keep the underprivileged out of the Academy, of course. The same system the Foxes defied. The real problem was the students playing enemy. There had been an uproar when it had transpired that Nathaniel would participate. Andrew wished he didn't remember what the students told each other. Have been telling each other for months. Instead of dying down, the frenzy had just grown and grown, until today. The sheer number of students volunteering for the exam was enough to worry all the Foxes.

The worst were the ones who gathered enough stupidity to ask Andrew about Nathaniel. Well, not ask; more like regurgitating their revolting fantasies on him.

_ Have you been preparing him well in those private training sessions? _

_ Is he as fiery as Riko says? _

_ Gods, that tight little body. Doesn't it make you go crazy, all the things you would do to him? _

_ Hey Andrew, do you want to put your name on the list for gangbang day? _

Those he would find today, if he could. His priority was not letting Nathaniel out of his sight for a second. He wondered if this, too, was a behavior dictated by biology – the natural instinct of an alpha protecting his omega. His object. He decided that ultimately, he didn't care. He cared more about Nathaniel being safe for today. Everything else could wait.

A nagging memory, treacherous like rocks lying just beneath the surface of the sea, snatched his mind.

_ You like me _ , he had said, months before.

The oblivious idiot. 

Andrew finished buttoning up his uniform, and then strapped his shardsword to his side. Riko was going to play enemy, of course, with all his Ravens. Kevin had elected to not rouse his anger, and would participate as a Raven. A coward through and through, but if it spared Nathaniel for today, if it meant one less reason for Riko to be angry and lash out, Andrew could look the other way.

He was the last one to arrive at the hangar. He still had a shred of dignity to protect.

  
  


Nathaniel paced his rooms. He was full to the brim of emotions crashing against each other like wrecked ships torn apart by a storm – hope, fear, anxiety, excitement – and Riko hadn't shown up yet. Nathaniel had half-expected a visit, before the exam; one last effort to cut him down, to handicap him, with knives or rape. The only one who was there was Kevin, looking as sick as Nathaniel felt. At the very least, he wasn't drinking; he still knew better than doing that before the exam.

“Did he say anything?” Nathaniel asked.

“I told you, he didn't tell me anything,” Kevin said, aiming for exasperated, but decidedly veering towards terrified. “He's been avoiding me all week. I tried to ask Jean but he's just as cagey.”

Nathaniel didn't want to say it.  _ They're planning something _ . If he did, one of them would break, and he wasn't sure who would go down first. To distract himself, he went to the new radio Kevin had bought, and turned it on. The radio speaker was talking, enthusiastically, of the upcoming exam, how the broadcast was going to follow closely the most famous and loved of the high class, both cadets and recruits. Nathaniel cursed, and looked for another station. He briefly contemplated running for it. He had no idea how or where to, but it was a comforting thought.

“How long yet?” he asked Kevin. There were no clocks in the cloistered wing, so he had to rely on Kevin’s pocket watch.

“Forty minutes.”

Nathaniel didn't ask him why he had come so early. He told himself to not hope for too much; if Riko was planning something, Kevin would not stop him.

When the knock came at the door, they both jumped. Riko didn't ask for permission, and opened the door. A servant waited right outside the door, eyes carefully downcast.

“Good morning, Nathaniel,” Riko said. “Today is your great day! I brought you breakfast.”

“I'm not hungry,” Nathaniel said, not bothering to hide his glare.

“Now, don't be like that,” Riko chastised him, grinning. “You'll need your energy today. Come on, you know the protocol.”

Only a few selected people were allowed to stay in the same room as Nathaniel, and only with the permission of the Emperor. Nathaniel looked at the cart, laden with food and pitchers of beverages, stormy expression full of suspicion. He left all the same, hiding behind the screens obscuring the bedroom.

The grin disappeared from Riko's face. He gestured to the servant, curtly, who wasted no time in preparing the table and covering it with an appetizing display.

Kevin watched in silence, trying to divine into Jean's eyes what was going on. Jean just glared at him, which was more than enough to make Kevin's stomach bottom out.

Nathaniel called from behind the screens. “Can I come out now?”

“Why are you so impatient, Nathaniel?” Riko asked. “There's plenty of time before the start of the exam.”

Then he extracted a small vial of clear liquid from his inside pocket. As the servant placed the last saucers and cups, Riko opened the vial. Then he let a few drops of its content fall into the two pitchers on the table, one of juice and the other of coffee. As he pocketed the vial again, the servant bowed and left. When he heard the door close, Nathaniel emerged from behind the screens. He had the look of a hunter finding himself alone and surrounded by a pack of wolves. 

Riko poured two glasses of juice and held one to Nathaniel. “I thought maybe coffee wasn’t the best of ideas this morning, don’t you agree? You look quite spooked.”

Nathaniel wanted to throw the glass at him; possibly after smashing it and getting a good sharp edge to use. But his mind was running a mile a minute. Whatever Riko had in mind, Nathaniel had very little room to avoid it. 

Maybe none at all.

He was still going to put up a good fight.

He grabbed the other glass, the one Riko was holding for himself, and brought it to his lips.

“No!” Kevin yelled, smashing it out of Nathaniel’s hand. The glass shattered on the floor, and the crystal noise of it boomed like thunderstrike.

“How dare you!” Riko screamed, and he punched Kevin with all the strength of his stolen power. Kevin felt fire exploding inside when two of his ribs snapped, and crumpled to the floor. 

Riko unsheathed his shardsword.

Nathaniel stopped plotting. He picked up the biggest piece of glass he saw. Then Jean grabbed his arms and restrained him by locking them behind his back. “Let me go!” Nathaniel screamed. “Jean, he’s going to kill him, let me go!”

“You think I don’t see what you’re doing, Kevin,” Riko hissed, “you think I don’t see what you’re planning. Cozying up with those losers, wagging your tail at that failure of a man who bred you.” 

Kevin barely had the breath to stand on his knees, and yet he couldn’t help himself. “How did you know?” he panted, shocked.

Riko ignored him. “You think that regiment has a future? You think Wymack can protect you? You belong to  _ me _ . You’re  _ no one _ without me. You wouldn’t have anything without me!” he finally yelled, and he lunged. Kevin rolled sideways just in the nick of time. The power of the shard coalesced at Riko’s bidding into a blade of deadly-sharp air. The table and the window behind it were cut clean through, and a spray of broken glass and cutlery exploded in the air. 

“You’re just the bastard son of an unnatural bitch! A joke of an alpha with the heart of an omega!”

Nathaniel struggled into Jean’s hold. “Draw your sword! Kevin,  _ draw your sword _ !” 

Kevin didn’t. “Riko, you have to stop this! I’m your brother!”

Riko burst into a mocking laugh. “My brother? You were never meant to be anything more than a servant!”

Riko cut down. Kevin’s sword clanged against his. 

“Jean, you have to stop them!” Nathaniel yelled, trying to elbow him in the solar plexus. 

“You want to leave without me,” Jean whispered, and Nathaniel froze, and stared at Riko in horror. If he  _ knew _ \---

“No, I didn’t tell him,” Jean said.

“ _ Jean _ \---”

“Shut up,” Jean hissed, locking him in a choke hold. “You can’t leave. My life will be  _ hell _ if you do.”

_ My life is already hell _ ! Nathaniel wanted to scream, but couldn’t.

Riko and Kevin exchanged blows. Kevin was holding back, terror clear on his face. Another window exploded into a shower of stained glass. Riko wasn’t.

“Jean!” Riko roared, “what the fuck are you waiting for?”

When Kevin took the opening, Nathaniel wanted to scream at him to just kill him, kill Riko now before he killed them both. 

Kevin disarmed him.

Riko’s shardsword clattered to the ground and rolled away. Kevin pointed his own to Riko’s throat, and when their eyes met, he saw, for a moment, more shock than rage in Riko’s eyes. 

But it was only a moment.

Then, Riko threw himself at Kevin. Kevin moved his sword away, not daring to use it, and Riko descended on him with all the fury of his wounded pride and stolen power. Kevin’s sword, too, fell when Riko threw him to the ground.

Riko unsheathed one of the knives he always kept on him.

He grabbed Kevin’s left arm.

And then stabbed the knife clean through his hand.

When Kevin screamed, he twisted the blade, and laughed like a demon. He left the knife where it was, and pummelled down until Kevin was on the ground. Then he used kicks. When Kevin stopped moving, he unsheathed another knife.

Nathaniel wasn’t sure what he was doing; maybe he was screaming. Maybe he was staring, frozen, like he used to do when his father cut people into pieces on a bloody floor, laughing all the while. He just knew he had to do something. He bent over, like he was trying to topple Jean, who re-adjusted to keep his equilibrium. Then Nathaniel whipped his head back, smashing it into Jean’s nose, who wailed in pain and loosened his hold. Nathaniel’s right hand fell to his shardsword, and as Jean stumbled back, he unsheathed it.

He lunged.

Riko turned.

He moved like a blur, and Nathaniel barely had the time to think,  _ Unfair _ . Then fire split his face open, and every thought was obliterated. Nathaniel fell to the floor, writhing, hands covering his face. Something warm dribbled between his fingers. He realized, belatedly, that it was blood, so abundant it was falling into his open, screaming mouth.

“What were you waiting for?!” Riko screamed at Jean. Jean just stared at him, biting his lips into a thin white line, avoiding to look at the blood sprayed on the floor, at Kevin and Nathaniel.

Riko charged at him, and Jean took a step back before he could check himself. Riko snarled, and reached for the inside pocket of Jean’s uniform. 

He took the syringe and went to Nathaniel. “Hold him still,” he ordered, and then straddled Nathaniel. Jean hesitated only a moment. He crouched and grabbed Nathaniel’s wrists, restraining him. 

Riko contemplated the damage. The cut extended from Nathaniel’s right jaw to his left brow, crossing over his nose, and was bleeding profusely. Riko bent down until their noses almost touched, and placed the tip of the knife inside Nathaniel’s mouth, until it was a breath away from splitting its corner. 

“Stop writhing,” Riko said. His voice was deadly calm, and that was what got Nathaniel, through the haze of horror and pain. Quaking with shock, Nathaniel forced his eyes to focus on what Riko was holding.

“Aw, you’re ruined now,” Riko continued, like he was talking about the weather. “Ichirou will never give you to his son. Maybe he won’t even let you out of here? I should cut your tongue out. Then you would be perfect.”

A distant part of Nathaniel noticed the crazed look in Riko’s eyes and the strange non-sequitur and worried, but the only thing he really paid attention to was the syringe.

“Oh, this?” Riko asked, and a grin started to bloom on his face. “Yes, Nathaniel, it’s exactly what you think.”

Nathaniel writhed with a full-body shudder, unheeding of the knife lodged in his mouth, and a noise - more frightened animal than human - tore itself from his throat.

Riko cackled. He removed the knife and placed it on Nathaniel’s right cheek instead, the edge kissing the skin. “Let me hear you, Nathaniel. Beg.”

Nathaniel wanted to scream in horror. His entire body felt like it was locked into place. The only thing that existed was that syringe, the glinting tip and the liquid inside. A heat-inducing drug. 

“Please,” he whispered through gritted teeth, and his voice broke almost immediately, and he hated himself. “Please don’t, please, please,  _ Jean _ \---”

Riko’s grin was so, so wide. Then he stabbed the syringe into Nathaniel’s neck.

Nathaniel screamed.

  
  


It took some time for Kevin to come to. Everything sounded distant; like he was underwater. There were words. There was a… noise. A continuous, high-pitched noise. Kevin tried to roll on his side, and pain was everywhere.

“He’s not getting out of here. Stitch him up.” 

“What? Riko, I  _ can’t _ ! He needs a proper doctor!”

Jean. Kevin couldn’t remember the last time he had sounded this distressed; of the three of them, he was the one who had opted for absolute self-annihilation to survive.

The three of them.

Kevin’s eyes flew open. Ignoring the way his ribs screamed at him, he propped himself up on an elbow. Nathaniel was curled in a tight ball on the floor, face buried in his hands. The noise was his. He was wailing. Kevin had never, ever saw him cry. Nathaniel hadn’t cried when he had been brought, kicking and screaming, in the cloistered wing. He hadn’t cried the first time Riko had visited, nor after he had left in the morning.

The sight of it broke something inside Kevin. Then he noticed the blood. Nathaniel’s hands, neck and shirt were stained with it. Kevin remembered to look at his own left hand. He half-expected the knife to be still buried in it.

It was.

The inarticulate noise he made caught Riko’s attention. He looked at Kevin like he was the best present he ever had the pleasure to destroy. He was positively glowing, and it made Kevin want to throw up.

Riko crouched in front of him and eyed the knife, the pulpy, red mess of flesh it was embedded through. “Pretty sure that won’t heal,” he commented airily. “Lots of torn ligaments and broken bones, mh?”

Kevin’s voice broke when he asked, “What have you done to him?”

Riko raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t it a little late to be so generous? You need not worry about dear Nathaniel. Nature will take its course; he just has a hard time accepting it. No matter. He won’t even remember his own name in a few hours. I was getting tired of waiting, so I took the problem into my own hands. That’s always the best course of action, isn’t? Now everything will be...” he paused, and his eyes fell to the knife again, “...exactly as it should be,” he finished, and jerked the knife out from Kevin’s hand.

Kevin screamed and curled inwards, his right hand hovering over the left, not daring to even touch it.

“You see, Kevin,” Riko continued conversationally, “you were tugging on your leash, both of you. I had to remind you your place.”

Riko lightly patted Kevin’s cheek. “I was always meant to be the Paladin. And I was always meant to be Nathaniel’s master.” 

Kevin saw black spots dancing in his vision, and fought to stay conscious. He forced himself to look away from Riko’s black eyes, filled with a manic gleam, and watched Nathaniel instead. Jean was helping him to sit up. Nathaniel met Kevin’s eyes. His face was streaked with mingled blood and tears, contorted into an unrecognizable mask of pain and grief. The gash made Kevin’s stomach turn. Kevin pushed Riko away and stumbled to his feet, cradling his ruined hand to his chest. Unheeding of how every breath knifed into his chest, he ran.

Riko’s laughter chased him like a nightmare.

  
  


When the candlestick phone in the Regiment’s quarters rang, silence fell on the Foxes, heavy like the dead air under black, livid clouds right before a storm raged. Wymack interrupted his speech, and stared at the device for a few seconds. It rang again. He went to it and picked up the receiver. 

“Hello?”

His face turned to alarm almost immediately. “Kevin? Kevin calm down, I don’t---”

His mouth fell open as he listened. The Foxes started to look agitated - more than they were just a few seconds before - and he schooled his expression. Andrew looked away, and gathered his energies.

It was happening, then.

“What? No, he can’t. Kevin---  _ Kevin _ !” Wymack boomed, and the frantic noises on the other end stopped. “We can’t expose him like this. It’s a one-time trick. We have only one shot at this, and once we use it, it’s over. Can you walk?”

Everyone fell silent again. 

“Then you’ll have to walk here. Take the royal passageway, it’s less crowded. I’ll call Abby, she’ll be here when you arrive, okay?”

When Wymack pushed on the hook to disconnect the call, the Foxes stayed uncharacteristically silent. Only Dan asked, “What’s going on?” but it sounded more like she was talking to herself than demanding answers. 

Wymack held up his finger to demand silence, waiting for the operator to pick up. When they did, he fired off Abby’s home telephone number, grumbling about urgency. 

When she picked up, he only said, “Abby. Kevin’s hurt. Ready your supplies, I’m sending someone to pick you up.”

Then he put the receiver back into the hook. “Matt. Take your airlugger and pick her up. Be as fast as you can.”

“Yes sir,” Matt said, and bolted.

Then Wymack faced the Foxes.

“Well?” Nicky asked, barely restraining his agitation. 

“Riko attacked Kevin. He ruined his left hand. Stabbed it.”

The Foxes erupted into several different questions, but the loudest one was Allison, who just yelled “That son a bitch!”

“What was that about a one-time trick?” Dan asked.

Wymack shook his head. “He isn’t thinking clearly. He asked me to send Andrew, so that he could slip away undetected.”

“Why the hell not?” Nicky asked. “You just said Riko stabbed him! He’s crazy and dangerous, Kevin must get out of there! What are we waiting for?”

“Use your head, Nicky!” Dan yelled. “What happens if we break into the Palace, take him away, and then he magically appears into our headquarters?”

“We’re labelled traitors,” Renee said, deathly calm. “And then we’d have to run very fast, very far away. It doesn’t matter that Riko might or might not want Kevin dead, once we do something like that and we’re discovered. If we take him now, we must also flee now.”

“Please tell me you’re not biding time so that we can still participate in the exam,” Aaron told Wymack.

Wymack hesitated only for a second, but it was enough for Andrew to notice. “Where is Nathaniel?” Andrew asked.

Wymack closed his eyes. “Andrew…”

Andrew turned to him, and stared. 

“...Riko attacked him too. Kevin said something about trying to defend him.”

“Attacked him how?” Allison asked. “What did he do to him?”

“I don’t know,” Wymacks said. “We’ll know once he gets here. He didn’t sound like he could breathe very well. If Riko pummelled him into a pulp I want to be sure he makes it. Nicky, Allison, come with me. Everyone else, wait here for Abby.”

Wymack sent a significant look at Renee that Andrew didn’t miss. He wondered, idly, how long he had known, and how long Renee had. Andrew hadn’t told her anything, and Nathaniel wouldn’t---

He bent and crooked that thought like he would the finger of a man with stupid ideas and no sense of self-preservation, until it disappeared into the darkness. He went back to staring at the wall. Renee watched him, but didn’t say anything, electing to listen to the remaining Foxes and their frantic speculations.

Abby arrived, and then Kevin, half-dragged in by Nicky. His left hand was wrapped in a dark shirt to hide the blood, but his face bore the mark of Riko’s fists. 

“Fuck, didn’t anyone try to stop you? He’s bleeding,” Dan asked.

“They tried,” Allison said. She and Nicky eased him on a table, where Abby had opened her tiered nurse case. Abby asked the Foxes to make some space and don’t hover. Kevin didn’t look as she unwrapped his hand, and she was careful not so say anything, not even to inhale too sharply. But the Foxes weren’t famous for their restraint, and more than one gasped when they saw the damage.

Abby let go of his hand and started to gently prod his side, but Kevin was having none of it. “No, the hand, take care of the hand first,” he begged her, sounding like he was one breath away from hyperventilation.

“Kevin, I’m pretty sure you have some broken ribs, I have to---”

“ _ Fuck my ribs, my hand is ruined, Abby _ !” Kevin screamed, voice shrill with hysteria. 

As Abby struggled to calm him down, Wymack tried to throw everyone out of the hall and into the hangar, but he was having a hard time convincing them with petty arguments such as  _ privacy _ . 

Andrew had stayed silent and still, seated on the couch, all the while. As the other Foxes fought about whether to leave or stay, he rose, and they fell silent. Andrew ignored them. He went to Kevin, and towered over him. He, too, fell silent, shivering like a cornered animal. Andrew almost told him how pathetic he was, looking everywhere for another Riko, a safer version of what he already knew. But there was only one thing that mattered then.

“What happened to Nathaniel?” Andrew asked.

“Andrew, I’m---”

“If you dare telling me you’re sorry, then by the infernal gods, I will strangle you,” Andrew interrupted him, enunciating every syllable with careful attention. He could feel the words slipping away from him, becoming meaningless in the devouring black hole yawning open inside his chest. 

“I tried to stop him! I swear I tried!” Kevin yelled, grabbing Andrew’s arm with his good hand. Andrew steeled his body into stillness, and let him. He wanted to see how far Kevin would go, how much he had forgotten himself. Already, he looked wrecked.

“That’s why he attacked me, he--- he wanted to---” Kevin’s voice broke, and he started sobbing. He would never, ever forget that last glimpse he had of Nathaniel, the blood-chilling wound on his face and the despair hollowing his eyes.

Andrew forced himself not to shake him, and waited.

“He gave him a heat-inducing drug,” Kevin finally stuttered out. “I tried to stop him, I swear I tried---”

Andrew grabbed him and threw him back onto the table, ignoring Abby’s protests. “And that makes all the difference, doesn’t it?” Andrew said, as cold as an arctic winter night. 

Like trying helped anyone.

Like trying helped Nathaniel.

The telephone rang again. Wymack looked about ready to throw it out of the window, but instead took a steadying breath and picked up the receiver. “What?” he barked. His face quickly changed from angry, to worried, to outraged. “Are you fucking kidding m--- Oh, sweet goddess of mercy,” he finally said, pinching the spot between his drawn eyebrows. He exhaled through his teeth as he listened for a long, drawn-out moment, surrounded by a silence so absolute, a pin falling would have boomed like thunder. “Okay, okay, listen. They called you because you’re one of the best physicians in the city to treat omegas. I want you to hold on to that position with everything you’ve got, understand? I don’t care if you tell them you delivered the Sacred Queen herself, lie through your teeth if you have to, but  _ get. That. Job _ . Okay? Good. Be careful.”

Wymack put the receiver down. He was careful about it; like he was thinking, gathering his thoughts. Or like he was defeated. He met Abby’s eyes before he spoke, looking for courage. “Shut up and listen in silence, all of you, because we have very little time,” he said. “First. Riko is accusing Kevin of trying to sexually assault Nathaniel.”

Kevin looked, if possible, paler than before.

“You've got to be kidding me!” Matt yelled.

“Shut up I said! We have maybe ten minutes to clear out of here and run like all the demons of hell are at our heels, so listen in  _ silence _ !” Wymack said, raising his voice over the mounting commotion. For the first time since the Foxes knew him, he looked truly murderous – the way a veteran of tens of victorious battles would look. They fell silent.

“Riko’s version is that Nathaniel fought back, Kevin wounded him, and at that point, Riko discovered him and chased him off. Kevin is officially a traitor.”

“It’s just Riko’s word! What about due process?” Nicky asked. “I’m sure Nathaniel would testify---”

“Testify against the Crown Prince? And what good would that do?” Allison snarled. “Kevin is as good as dead if he stays.”

“And so are we if we protect him,” Aaron said.

“I doubt Riko cares whether we protect him or not,” Renee said.

“No he doesn’t, and that’s why we’re leaving,” Wymack said. “We’re leaving right now. Abby, how long do you need to make Kevin fit to travel?”

“Hold on a fucking second, what about Nathaniel?” Dan asked, waiting for Wymack to say something, to deny the horrible realization that was dawning on her.

Wymack didn’t look away. “There is nothing we can do for him now.”

The Foxes exploded into outrage; the only ones who didn’t look surprised were Renee and Aaron. Kevin closed his eyes and suppressed a sob; it tore out of his throat anyway, shredded like the torn sail of a wrecked ship, snapping in the wind of the after-storm. Andrew stopped looking at him. He stopped looking at anything.

“We can’t leave him here, in heat, at Riko’s mercy!” Dan said.

“If Nathaniel is in heat,” Renee said, grimacing, “we can't get near him. Or rather, I could, and Aaron could, but moving him would be… difficult.”

“In a matter of hours, Nathaniel will be barely coherent, and every alpha in a three-miles radius will scent him, and go batshit insane,” Wymack said. “You have no idea how strong the siderai hormones are. There’s a reason mating with one is considered a mystical experience in Eudaimonia.”

“You can’t be serious. We can’t leave him behind now that--- now that Riko will---” Matt said, unable to finish the sentence. It simply was too much to bear.

“You think I like the idea, Matt?” Wymack asked. “Do you think I won’t be tormented by the knowledge of it, every night starting from today, for as long as I live? We have to be smart about this, Matt. We have to survive this. Being noble and stupid won’t help him.”

Kevin’s anguished, inarticulate noise sounded like the last call for help of someone drowning. “I can’t leave him behind,” he said, struggling against Abby who was trying to prevent him from sitting up. “ _ I can’t leave him behind _ ,” he repeated, raising his voice as much as he could, but it was still a hoarse, hollow sound.

Andrew watched Kevin one last time, wrecked and broken by Riko’s hand. Kevin met his stare, and looked afraid. He didn’t understand that Andrew wasn’t looking at him, not really. Andrew turned, and walked towards the exit. Everyone turned to him. He ignored them.

“Andrew, where are you going?” Aaron asked, sounding panicked.

Andrew paused, his back to the Foxes, to his cousin, to Renee, to his brother. His shardsword whispered, slow and sharp, when he unsheathed it. “I’ll buy you time,” he said.

A partial truth; like the ones Nathaniel liked so much to throw in Andrew’s face, thinking he didn’t notice. 

The thought of  [ his name ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKx611dyQHk) was enough to send a jolt through Andrew’s entire body. It was like the shock of being thrown from warmth into a freezing-cold blizzard, the air turning every breath into a stab of ice. 

Andrew, too, had something to look forward to, every night, but not for the rest of his life. Only until he freed him.

He was going to buy them time. But he was also going to send a message, the way a stranded castaway would. A message in a bottle, left to the mercy of the currents by hands that only knew hopelessness and despair, and yet still tried. 

Giving in had never been his style.

Aaron shot up from where he had been seated. “ _ Andrew _ ,” he said, not daring to say more; a name that was both a plea and an accusation.

Andrew didn’t turn.

There was only one access to the Foxes’ quarters; they was on top of a tower, separated from the main buildings of the Academy, with a single bridge connecting them. A form of protection for a regiment that stood out, with its unique recruits, they said. Or a handy way to corral them in, if one needed to - like Riko did. Andrew stopped at the end of the bridge, and waited. Wymack had said ten minutes. He doubted they had that long. Riko didn’t strike him as the kind of man who could delay the pleasure of kicking someone who was already in the gutter, and Kevin had been groomed to be the perfect victim. Andrew never moved his eyes from the other side of the bridge, but he caught something at the periphery of his vision. The radio broadcasts’ airluggers circled the tower at a safe distance. He wondered if anything had been said about the exam, if it had been cancelled already, or at all. 

He didn’t acknowledge their presence. Journalists tended to flee if he looked at them too long, and that wasn’t what he wanted - for once.  

Andrew didn’t have to wait long. Riko was a speck of billowing black - he had found the time to change into his high uniform, complete with decorations and cape. 

Pretentious prick.

Of course, he wasn’t alone; the entire Royal Guard seemed to trot at his heels, together with all the Ravens and Jean. That was easy to deal with. Andrew started to tug at the fingers of his left glove, loosening them one by one. He never moved his eyes from Riko.

“If it isn’t the rabid dog,” Riko mocked.

Andrew did not have it in him to hear one word from him, and Riko had already used six. If he started to say  _ anything _ about Nathaniel, Andrew would---

He murdered that thought as swiftly as he knew how. He wasn’t going to make this about himself. 

He was going to give Nathaniel something to look back to, for strength. Gods knew he was going to need that.

“What are you doing, all alone and with your sword drawn? Did your master leave you behind?” Riko asked, a gleeful light shining in his black eyes. “Did he tell you---”

Andrew’s glove smacked him in the face with a satisfying  _ splat _ . It fell to the floor surrounded by absolute silence - so absolute, in fact, that Andrew heard the closest journalist’s frantic reporting, carried by the wind. Riko was, for once in his life, at a loss for words.

“Shut up. I’m challenging you to a duel.”

Fury flooded Riko’s face until it was contorted into a mask of outrage. “ _ You _ , a working house nobody, dare to challenge  _ me _ , the  _ Crown Prince _ , to a duel?”

“I am an alpha. I can, and I did. Or are you going to be a coward?”

“You have no right to even speak to His Highness like this, let alone duel him,” Jean said, glowering. “But since the challenge has been issued already, I’ll---”

“Shut up, Jean,” Riko barked. “I don’t need a proxy to wipe the floor with worthless scum like him. But tell me, Minyard,” he said, and his voice turned sugary sweet and dripping with venom, “what’s the offense?”

Andrew stayed silent.

“Oh, I know,” Riko went on with a sadistic grin, enjoying every second of this. “Mating rights? Ooh, don’t tell me, is it affection? Is that it? How pathetic. Did he convince you he’s different, that he’s not like other omegas? Because he is. No matter how haughty he acts, he’ll still end up writhing underneath the first alpha available, begging to be knotted like the whore he is.”

_ Too. Many. Words _ . “Bold of you to call someone else a pathetic whore. Everyone sees how you drool and wag your tail for your brother, and he doesn’t even want to look in your direction,” Andrew said. He cut Riko’s outraged retort short with a curt, “If you’re done talking, my sword is ready.”

Riko looked like he wanted to waste more time insulting him, but he thought better of it. If he did, it would look like he wasn’t willing to fight, that he was hesitating. “Fine,” he said, and his sickening grin was back. “But let’s take this somewhere more public. I want my subjects to know exactly who the Foxes are: worthless traitors who talk big and then fail to deliver every time. It will be a good prelude to your collective executions.”

_ You have no subjects, Second Son _ , Andrew thought, but he didn’t waste his energies. He had been collecting them for this very moment since that first phone call. No, since that morning, because he had known something like this was going to happen. He knew letting someone in was going to end up like this, again. He knew better, but had been powerless all the same. Nathaniel had that effect on him, and he wasn’t even aware of it, wasn’t even trying. 

Andrew hated him more for it. Things he had been intimately familiar with - things he didn’t want to name - were emerging again, calling to him like mermaids with shiny fangs. If Andrew was as smart as he thought, he wouldn’t be here now. He wouldn’t be facing this dark sea in a dark night, boundless in their merging horizons, a bottomless darkness that called and beckoned and offered only one option - sinking.

Andrew remembered, oxymoronically, Nathaniel's ice-blue eyes, the way they had been the very first time he had seen him. Eyes so bright they looked filled with stars. Eyes that had been inexplicably duller just a few hours after, at the banquet. 

He had a suspicion what that meant. He wanted Nathaniel to survive long enough to confirm it. He trusted Wymack to take care of everything else that was necessary to reach that end.

Riko gestured to the radio airluggers circling around the tower until one came close enough, and requisitioned one for himself and Jean. He then ordered another one to take Andrew down. The Academy grounds were just underneath, ready for the exam. Tribunes had been set up at either side of the expanse, high enough to offer a good view of the vast area. They had been filling with aristocrats and nouveaux riches for hours, chatting idly as they waited for the exam to start. Most of the families who counted were present, to gauge the worth of the young men who were going to fight today. Andrew paid them no mind. He also ignored how incompetent the airlugger pilot was, obviously not used to balance a third passenger hanging on to the side. Andrew balanced his own weight  with his left foot, placed on the landing gear, and focused on not pummelling to the ground. 

The radio journalist in the rear seat didn’t waste the chance. “Andrew Minyard, wasn’t it? Can I ask you a few questions?”

Andrew, usually, would have stared at him in silence until the awkwardness was too much to handle. Today, however, was a peculiar day. “No. I want to make a statement. Are you live?”

If the journalist was thrown off by his request, he didn’t show it. “Of course!” he said, and moved his radio receiver as closer to Andrew as the cord allowed. “Fire away, our listeners are sure curious to know why you challenged His Majesty to a duel!”

“ _ Survive _ ,” Andrew ordered. “Survive until summer.”

Someone else might have tried to convey something - grit, determination, even spite - but his voice was as flat as always.

Then he jumped. The sudden shift in weight threw the pilot off, and the airlugger careened away, making both pilot and journalist curse. Andrew summoned the power of the shard, and used it to cut the space between him and the ground. He landed in a blur of distorted air, like the distant flash of glass catching the sunlight, but in reverse, dark in the sunny, crispy day. Various spectators gasped at his display. If was stupid to show off like this, giving away the chance to take Riko by surprise. Andrew didn’t need to beat him. He wanted to - in fact, he wanted to close his hands around Riko’s throat and squeeze until he snapped his neck - but killing him would be quick. What Andrew needed was time.

Jean landed the airlugger with the ease of the accomplished pilot, in one fluid motion. Riko jumped out, and started to unclasp his cape.

“You’re even stupider than I thought,” Riko taunted him. “But why should that surprise me? You’re a Fox.”

It was too bad Andrew couldn’t break his tongue like he was going to break at least a few bones in his body. Maybe one day he’d have the chance to cut it out. 

The news about the duel was spreading fast. Andrew saw it moving like a ripple, agitating the masses of well-dressed attendees, pushing them into motion. Soon enough, a sizeable public had formed, gathered in a wide circle around them. Riko had beckoned some members of the court that happened to be in attendance as he waited for his cronies to reach the grounds; it was unusual to see him not surrounded by them, with only Jean following deferentially, and no Kevin in sight. When a courtier politely inquired on whether the Emperor knew Riko had publicly declared Kevin a traitor, Riko lost his composure faster than you could say  _ crumbling psyche _ . “Are you calling me a liar? Kevin tried to desecrate a property of the Crown and then attacked me. That’s the only thing you will care about!” he snarled.

Andrew closed his eyes and steadied his breath. If he killed him, the entire Imperial Army would look for them. The only thing he could do was to incapacitate him and hope that bought some respite for Nathaniel. He couldn’t settle for a half-hearted attempt at dragging this as much as he could. He needed time, he needed to give Nathaniel strength, and he wasn’t stupid enough to think Riko was an adversary he could keep at bay easily. 

“Who’s going to be your second?” Riko asked Andrew.

“I don’t have one.”

“Of course you don’t,” Riko sighed, mockingly. “Jean, you do it.”

Jean looked startled, then afraid, but it was gone in an instant. Andrew wondered what Riko had in mind this time, but then he understood when Jean passed him by to stand behind him. 

He could smell Nathaniel on him, and the metallic scent of blood. 

When Andrew focused on Riko again, he saw him grin, waiting for his reaction with sadistic delight. Andrew schooled his anger into sharp, cold, deadly steel like he always did, and remained impassive.

Riko appointed a nearby nobleman as his second, and unsheathed his sword.

“Until first blood is drawn,” Jean announced.

Andrew tightened his grip on his own shardsword.

Then Riko charged forward, lightning-fast. Andrew met his blow, and the swords clanged their teeth-straining song. The blow was hard, just as Andrew expected; it reverberated down his arms. He tried move Riko’s sword away, and was met with an amount of strength that was simply inhuman. 

 

_ Everything Riko has is stolen _ , Nathaniel had told him weeks before.  _ He wouldn’t be First Knight if he didn’t keep Kevin under his heel. He wouldn’t be nearly as strong if he didn’t...  _

 

Andrew pivoted on his right heel and disengaged, trying to make Riko lose his balance. Riko wasn’t fooled, and attacked again. They exchanged blows, and Riko’s attacks only grew heavier, until Andrew’s bones seemed to rattle with it.

 

_ If he didn’t steal my strength. _

 

Andrew took a step back, like he needed breath. Riko used his favorite trick, the one Andrew had seen every single time Riko bullied the Academy cadets into training with him; he moved too fast for the eye to follow clearly, and aimed a downward blow at Andrew’s knees. Andrew expected it. He cut the space between them, and materialized behind Riko. But Riko was fast, much faster than anyone else Andrew had ever fought. Andrew had taken him by surprise, but it wasn’t enough. They exchanged blows, both relentless. Andrew used his power to dance around Riko’s sword, knowing that he didn’t have the strength to block his every attack. 

The crowd, polite and detached at first, became rowdier and rowdier as the minutes passed, perplexed and then fired up by Riko’s inability to finish Andrew off - or even land a glancing blow. It was an unprecedented sight. Not even Kevin had ever held him off this long. Riko’s was starting to get frustrated, and it showed - at least to Andrew. 

“Is this the best you can do, Minyard?” Riko asked as they circled each other. “Just hopping around, unable to meet my sword?”

Riko brought the sword’s hilt level to his own eyes, and gripped the base of the blade with his left hand. A thin trickle of blood seeped beneath his fingers. “Cowards like you shouldn’t ever wield a shardsword, the weapon that eats your soul!”

Riko swung the sword in a wide arch. Lightning shot forward, called by the offering of blood for the shard, and the crowd screamed in panic; but before anyone had the time to do more than fall to the ground, the lightning was gone, leaving only the tang of ozone. 

And Andrew was still standing, his sword held vertically in front of him. The public was confused, wondering out loud what had happened even as it moved away. Riko had seen it, though, and he gnashed his teeth. Andrew could cut space and create an intangible shield so easily, and yet he was just a lowly Fox; he was worthless trash, born from worthless trash. 

And he thought he had any chance to bed Nathaniel? Riko was suddenly struck by a memory, an inconsequential detail he had dismissed as unimportant; Andrew dancing with Nathaniel months before, at the ball. Riko had assumed nothing would happen after he had offered him on a silver platter, and Andrew hadn’t done anything.

Certainly Nathaniel _would_ _not dare_ …

Riko yelled, and charged forward. Andrew stood his ground, feet apart and steady, and waited for him. Riko clashed his sword against Andrew’s shield with all the strength he had. It was almost enough, but not quite, and the force of the impact reverberated back into Riko’s arms. 

Riko loosened his grip…

Andrew materialized a few feet away, and so the lightning bolt that came, insidious as a snake lying in wait in the tall grass, missed him. Riko growled, expecting Andrew to brag about having seen through his trap, but Andrew stayed perfectly impassive, waiting for his next move.

Then came the roar of an engine overhead, and everyone around them looked up. The  _ Foxhole _ , the regiment’s airship carrier, was taking flight from the nearby hangar. A handful of airluggers rose with it, and veered towards them. 

Andrew never took his eyes away from him, and neither did Riko.

“What are you going to do, run?” Riko sneered. “Just like Kevin did?” 

Andrew stayed silent. He could feel the soil gripping his soles, as though vines were creeping from the earth and chaining him in place, singing, chanting, whispering -  _ stay _ .

It was exceedingly difficult to think, to remember what was smart, what made sense.

Riko’s sneer stretched and turned into an ugly, cruel grin. “If Kevin had any guts to finish what he started, he’d be here - instead he’s cowering behind trash like you. Where did your captain’s idealism go? I’d expect her here, foaming at the mouth and charging like the idiot she is, to prevent the inevitable from happening. It was always going to finish like this. I will break him in for good this time. And he’ll like it.”

Andrew charged. Riko tasted victory, and attacked in a downward arch.

Andrew materialized to his right, and crushed his intangible shield against Riko’s arm and side. The sickening crunch of breaking bone was loud enough to cover the rushing in Andrew’s ears; the blood offering was enough to drench his shirtsleeve now, and his grip was slackening. 

Then Riko howled.

Andrew saw the Ravens and the Royal Guard surging, and decided against staying to enjoy the view of Riko writhing in pain. He made one last cut - a longer, more strenuous one that left him dizzy with blood loss - and appeared on Nicky’s airlugger. 

“Holy shit, what did you do to him?” Nicky yelled over the rush of the wind. “Please tell me he’s going to stay in bed for months!”

Andrew didn’t answer. He had wanted to aim at his ribcage, to pulverize it so badly Riko could never lay a finger on Nathaniel ever again. 

Such moves were very likely to simply kill.

Killing him would have been so easy. But Andrew had promises to keep, no matter how painful.

  
  


Nathaniel was sitting at the table, head hanging, staying as still as possible. His hands clenched and unclenched around his arms, nails digging into the skin until the little moon-shaped dents bled. His shirt was abandoned in a corner.

It was hot.

He didn’t want to think that  _ he _ was hot. If he did, he was going to start crying hysterically.

Again.

His body was coursed through by shivers that grew more and more uncontrollable.

_ He _ was not shivering.

The feeling of the slick coating his thighs and drenching his pants was so horrifyingly disgusting, he wanted to claw his skin open and escape his own body. He had never--- his body had never produced slick before. Not even once had Riko been able to make it. Nathaniel had been, deep down, relieved of it, no matter how painful it made things. But now it was happening, and---

Nathaniel pressed a hand over the bandage crossing over his face. The flare of pain was intolerable, and he screamed. His face felt puffy and tender, ready to burst like an overripe fruit, and it hurt so badly he could barely keep his eyes open.

The agony was better.

The radio was on, right next to him. He had turned it on himself, before---

Before.

It was everything the newsreels could talk about. Every station had picked up on the story, and was now commenting the recording ad nauseam, but he had heard it live. They were broadcasting it again.

 

_ Dear listeners, the cadet is going head to head with the First Knight! It’s quite incredible we’ve never heard of such tremendous talent in the use of the shard! Oh, what---? It seems like the Day Regiment’s flagship is taking flight! Could this be connected to this morning’s announcement of Kevin Day’s treason? Prince Riko and the cadet are studying each other - will the cadet run? It would be such a great dishonor to leave without--- no! He’s attacking! The Prince--- Good Gods! Listeners, he did it again! The cadet materialized to the side of Prince Riko and summoned a sort of--- of shield of light and crushed it into the Prince’s side! The Prince is down! He seems to be in great pain!  _

 

On the air, a handful of political and gossip commentators eviscerated each other over how to interpret it, how it might impact the image of the Imperial family, what it meant of Riko’s character and public role, the social and cultural impact of it, and so many other things Nathaniel couldn’t care less about. The only thing he cared about was the cryptic message that was brought up over and over again, the one Andrew had left.

 

_ Survive. Survive until summer _ .

 

Summer, when the Free Marches delegation would be back. 

Nathaniel had to believe him. He had to hope, or he was going to just let himself waste away.

  
  


When Riko arrived, he was still listening. The commentators were still at it. If Nathaniel was to judge from what he heard on the radio, it seemed like the entire empire was doing one thing, and one thing only - talking about Riko’s defeat. The comments became less and less charitable as the hours piled. 

Riko’s right arm was heavily bandaged, a brace keeping it in place. He was lingering on the door, looking like a black, livid storm ready to scourge the earth. Nathaniel turned his face to him infinitesimally, slid his hand toward the radio, and turned the volume all the way up. It took a few second for Riko to understand. When he did, he screamed in a wordless, inarticulate rage. He fell on Nathaniel and slapped him, then threw him to the ground. The pain was atrocious, but Riko wasted time to throw the radio against the wall and kick it into pieces, so Nathaniel had time to recover.

And he started to laugh.

He laughed and laughed of him, laughed until the only thing left for him was hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... :)))))


	6. Chapter 6 - WIP

HELLO I'M NOT DEAD, also this is probably something either a) totally illegal b) extremely annoying, BUT I'm halfway through chapter 6 and I need to share. I just have to. I don't want to publish this as is, because this chapter WILL end on a positive note, and this is not it... but I also need to know if there's anyone still reading after all these months of silence ;_; moving to a new city is hard and so is having a 9-6 job. so i'm posting the work in progress version. EVERY COMMENT IS LOVED AND APPRECIATED. Come yell at me.

 

TW for sexual assault, rape. I am not kidding around here, you know that by now.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vwUX-91HoJMT3qGCjhqrBJ9XiQ4GGpiT8_KRhak8QX4/edit?usp=sharing


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